{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_44208/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_44208","id":"gutenberg_44208","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44208","summary":null,"tags":["American essays -- 20th century","Category: Parenthood & Family Relations","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Teaching & Education","Child development","Children","Education"],"text":"Note: Images of the original pages are available through\n      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See\n      https://archive.org/details/hivewill00comfiala\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE HIVE\n\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nBY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT\n\n\n         THE HIVE\n         THE LAST DITCH\n         CHILD AND COUNTRY\n         LOT & COMPANY\n         RED FLEECE\n         MIDSTREAM\n         DOWN AMONG MEN\n         FATHERLAND\n\n\n           NEW YORK\n\n   GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n\nTHE HIVE\n\nby\n\nWILL LEVINGTON COMFORT\n\nAuthor of \"Midstream,\" \"Child and Country,\"\n\"The Last Ditch,\" \"Down Among Men,\" etc.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\nNew York\nGeorge H. Doran Company\n\nCopyright, 1918,\nBy George H. Doran Company\n\nPrinted in the United States of America\n\n\n\n\n                                TO MARY\n\n\n                         ... soft gold and deep\n                     fragrance and pomegranate red.\n\n\n\n\nFOREWORD\n\n\nThere is much to say. Many have a part in this story of our days.\nTheir work is on the table. Yet no manuscript, no chapter, is a real\nbeginning. One must start a book this way--with a fresh sheet in the\nmachine and tell what he is going to tell about.... First of all, it\nhas to do with the unfolding of the child mind; all the Stonestudy work\nhas been for that, but the brimming wonder of it all is that we have\nchiefly been employed unfolding ourselves.\n\nNo one can begin upon the sweet and sacred story of life to a child\nwithout taking a stride nearer into the centre of things, and living\nit. That's what all telling is about--presently to stop talking and to\ncatch up on conduct. The fairest culture of all is to become artists in\nlife.... Thinking of this, thinking much upon this one thing, we have\nbeen lured out of the heaviness of work into the dimension of Play. We\ntell here about this particular passage.\n\nAlso something about the story of Man and Woman, hinting at what is\ncontained in pages of the Book of Life not opened heretofore for the\neyes of the many, but preparing now for the eyes of the children of\nthe New Race--a beautiful story, be sure of that, but one that requires\nart in the telling. No one could bring this story to the lovers and the\nchildren of the New Race who had not found out that Beauty belongs to\nthe divine trinity with Goodness and Truth.\n\nMany seers have not held that well in mind, many sages have forgotten\nit, many saints have not learned it adequately at all. We have to build\nour own heavens here before we can have them anywhere else. The more of\nan artist a man is, the more reverent he becomes about perfecting his\nthought-forms. Just a mention now--that we rejoice to make much of the\nBeauty side of things in this book; that a thing cannot be beautiful\nand bad; that Beauty is the next quest of the many, as they escape one\nby one from the bondage of Gold.\n\nWe try to express the Soul of things rather than to delineate\nboundaries of matter, but a very strong point is made upon the fact\nthat one cannot deal in the spirit until he has mastered to a good\ndegree the coarser stuff that bodies and worlds are made of. We do not\ncare how the young minds aspire mystically, so long as their abutments\nhold fast in the bottom-lands. A man must not drag his anchor as he\nclimbs the hill; he must unfold line all the way--a line made of\nstrands of himself, woven of his own wisdom, love and power.\n\nMuch is made in this book of the fact that we are given _pounds_ for a\npurpose--that all here below is symbol and intimation of a globe and\nperfection elsewhere--that we cannot look upon the archetype of gold\nuntil we have mastered the imitation in clay.... We come even closer\nto this precious subject: For instance, we know that it is only from\nthe soul of things that one can see materials--that no one can get a\nglimpse of the meaning of materials so long as he is lost in the ruck\nof them. At the same time we do not believe that we have access, even\nto the lesser grades of mysticism, until we have all the power and\nforce of the material-minded. We believe we must do well that which the\nworld is doing, even the tasks of the average man, that nothing can be\nmissed.\n\nWe do not encourage that mystic or poet who requires endowment. If we\nare to be artists, we believe in supporting our own groups; we have a\nsuspicion that we are not through with conditions, any conditions no\nmatter how hateful, so long as they have us whipped.\n\nWe aspire to be writers and politicians and painters and heroes; we\naspire to be masters in all the superb productions of life, but we are\ncontent to begin with the ground. We are content with poverty, yet we\nbelieve that very early as workmen, we are entitled to a fastidious\npoverty, which is expensive. No possessions--but all possessions. As\nwriters we are convinced that it is necessary to do--and inimitably\nwell--the things that the public wants and pays ten cents the word for,\nquite as well as to reveal the deeper folds of our growth for which we\nhave to finance publication. We are not sure yet which is the worthier\nachievement.\n\nPerhaps we speak much of Soul in this book, but we mean nothing more\nformidable than the better part of every man. This is the Big Fellow\nwho takes us over when we do that which is worth while--in billiards\nor diplomacy, in art or love or trade. I think it is the Big Comrade\nwhich we are really unfolding--the Workman and Player. Much of Soul, we\nwrite, because it is the point of our educational drive--to set It free\nin the child or the young workman, to make It speak or write or play,\nand not mere brain and hand.\n\nWe speak much of love--not as an emotion, not as a sentiment, but as a\ncosmic force. You will see much more what we mean by this as you turn\nthe pages. It is the most challenging thing in the world. It is the\ninner white-hot core of the Fatherland that is to be--the great white\nDemocracy of the future....\n\n_Democracy_--that's the point of inception of it all; that word is\nthe seed. The more you dwell upon it--you know what the Seamless Robe\nof the Christ means--the more you realise that the Master Jesus was\nthe first Big Democrat.... We have them speak the word softly and\nthoughtfully here each day--we like to hear the young ones say it. They\nare apt to know as much about it as you do--for the word doesn't mean\nexactly what they mean, who have used it most heretofore. It isn't\nthe name of a political party--yet.... It is government of the people\nby the people, but only to those who see the sons of God in the eyes\nof passing men. We only ask its magic, not its presence upon these\npages.... They're fighting for it gloriously--every hour. The boys here\nthrill with the boys there. We hold our hands high to them. Some of our\nboys are there. They are all our boys! Some are waiting the call to\ngo--but there or here, we are pulling together for the real Fatherland,\nfor the adequite fraternity, under the endless and thrilling magic of\nthe word _Equality_.\n\n... I can say no more splendid word to you than My Equal: I know of\nno greater adventure than to become one of the Many. It is true that\nyou and I--the best of us, the Immortal within us each, are of one\nhouse--that this is but a far outpost of the journey, Egypt if you\nlike, the husks if you like--but that we have arisen and are on our way\nhome to the Father's House.\n\n\n  Canyon, Santa Monica, California.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                            PAGE\n\n  NORTH AMERICANS             17\n\n  QUICKENINGS                 24\n\n  CONQUEST OF FEARS           36\n\n  THE STUFF OF COMRADES       45\n\n  JOHN'S THINGS               56\n\n  VALUES OF LETTER WRITING    70\n\n  THE NEW DANCING             79\n\n  OLD PICTURES IN RED         91\n\n  STEVE                      101\n\n  HEJIRA                     111\n\n  THE SPECTATOR              118\n\n  TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL    129\n\n  THE ABBOT                  139\n\n  THE ARTIST UNLEASHED       155\n\n  WORK IN SHORT STORIES      164\n\n  VALLEY ROAD GIRL           172\n\n  BEAUTY                     183\n\n  SHUK                       192\n\n  IMAGINATION                205\n\n  BOYS AND DOGS              211\n\n  THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE    219\n\n  THE MATING MYSTERY         241\n\n  CHAPTER OF LETTERS         252\n\n  ROMANCE                    267\n\n  THE COSMIC PEASANT         277\n\n  R\u00c9SUM\u00c9                     315\n\n\n\n\n                                THE HIVE\n\n\n\n\n1\n\nNORTH AMERICANS\n\n\nThe thing called the New Race--the passion of poets, the phantom\nrunning ahead and forever calling the dreamer and revolutionist\nand occultist, is far from a reality as yet among the commonplaces\nof the world. It is the spirit of everything worth while, but that\nmeans nothing to one who has not a breath of it in his own body.... A\nstory went forth from this shop recently in which certain ideals and\npresences of the new social order were carried through to a cheerful\nending. The publisher wrote, \"Yes, but what is the New Race?\"\n\nIt's a fair question, but remember one cannot adequately describe a\nspiritual thing in terms of matter. It is only possible of portrayal\nwhere it has broken through into terms of three-space. First you are\napt to get the nearest and most striking picture of the New Race at\nyour own supper-table--the presence of one of your own children,\nespecially if the young one is hard to understand.\n\nParents and children of all times have found confusion and alarm in\neach other's ways. But there are rare periods of human history when\nthe difference between two generations has been not a normal and\nsuperficial crack, but an abyss. It is so now. The Old has reached\nits climacteric point of destructivity. All self-passions destroy\nthemselves in time. Fear, greed, sensuality--all are self-destructive.\nGreat human numbers and decadent principles have been recently\nbroken down in the world with a swiftness and abandonment heretofore\nunrecorded, except in the traditions of planetary flood and flame....\n\nYou may watch closely the child under seven who plays in the Unseen,\nwhose companions are not in the room for older eyes; watch the one of\nfancies and fairies and fragrances which others cannot quite discern.\nMany a child has been driven with a soul-wound into corroding silence\nby parents who thought they were punishing falsehood, when they were in\nreality repressing the imagination--the faculty which master-artists\ndenote as the first and loveliest possession of the creative mind. Too\ncoarse and unlit to see what the child saw, the parents again and again\nhave looked gravely at each other, saying:\n\n\"This is a crisis. Our child has begun to lie. We must forget her own\nfeelings and punish her----\"\n\nSo often it is _her_--but not always. The boys who are to do the\ngreat tasks of song and prophecy and architecture--they, too, dream\ndreams and see visions and have the rapt eyes of Joan in the forests\nof Domremy; they, too, are severely questioned by the pharisees; none\nescape this scourging; they, too, in many cases shall be put to death.\n\nThe new ideals of the parenthood, education, romance, are now being\nintroduced and promulgated by pioneers long since emerged from the old\nlitter and humus. Education will mean first of all a turning for power\nto the Unseen. The quest of the Swan and the Star and the Beloved, are\nnever carried along on the levels and inequalities of the earth--always\nthe uplifted face for the saint and the sage and the seer. Great\nparents kneel beside their children and beg to be delivered from the\nheaviness which holds them to the dim shadows, where the child sees\nface to face. Education will mean finding his intrinsic task for the\nchild--the intensive cultivation of the human spirit from the Soul\noutward, not alone from the brain inward.\n\nThe quest of the passing age was for Gold. The real meaning and\nsymbol and glory of gold, as the highest, smoothest and most finished\nof minerals, has been lost in the bulkier products and possessions\nit meant to measure and signify. More and more has gold itself hid\naway from vulgar hands and been represented by objects intrinsically\ninferior. We now behold a civilisation destroying itself for\ncommodities and destroying the commodities for which the destruction\nbegan.\n\nGold itself will serve Beauty in the coming age; commerce will serve\n\u00e6sthetics. The lovers of Beauty begin with the sand, with the clay.\nThey love nature from the ground up; they are fervent for light and\nair, for sun and sky and water, for fruits and grains and bees, for\nstars and rains and romances. They say such things are holy. Words are\ninadequate for their loves and appreciations. They find the ways to\nlove God infinite. They see Him in stone and stream; they see Him in\nthe eyes of the deep down men; they see Him risen and inevitable in the\neyes of their lovers....\n\nStraight goodness will not do for the New Race, nor straight\nintellectuality. Artists, singers, painters and idealists will be the\nheroes of the generations to come, for they will add the quest of\nBeauty to the unwashed goodness of the saints and pilgrims.\n\nThese are but flaring points; one is embarrassed in short space because\nof a myriad things to say. Free verse is a sign of the New, also the\ndream of a free world and the planetary patriotism. The immanence of\nthe _spirit_ of all things, is a sign; the sense of the underlying\noneness of humanity; not alone the Fatherland, but the Kinterland,\nwhere new Fountains are established and sages and masters come for\ninspiration--all these, like a passing train of wonder, a glimpse of\nmany cars....\n\nI think I can bring the picture in closer by using a few pages of work\nfrom one of the young men with me. His name is Steve. I called him The\nDakotan,[1] in the book, _Child and Country_. We've romped and ridden\ntogether for three years, and I've known Steve better every day--still\nfar from the end. The rest of the chapter is Steve's writing:\n\n    [1] H.A. Sturtzel.\n\n\nNORTH AMERICANS\n\nOut of the centuries of moil and mix and fuse of Europe, the orient and\nthe north countries, a gleaming archetype has emerged here which may\nbe called the real North Americans. They are scattered here and there\namong the younger generation--young people new in name only; in soul\nthey are as old as Zeus. Often they are strangers in their father's\nhouse. They blend the mind of the occidental with the soul of the east;\nsplendid firstlings of an untried future. They betray themselves by\ntheir genius. Heredity is the first fetich overthrown by them.\n\nFrom the first they are a law unto themselves. They cast off churches,\ncodes, creeds, schools and parents as preliminary steps in their\nteens. In the twenties they are prodigies, leaders in the arts or the\nrevolutions. It is their aim to over-reach themselves, not to further a\ntype. Very early they conjourn together in secret and obscure places,\nrevolting against life as it is lived, like a handful of white dwellers\nin a foreign city.\n\nThere is always an alien, intangible something about these people. One\nsenses the double life they lead, their own, and others. Conditions\nare not yet adjusted for them. They are super-nationalists, the first\nmark of the new. They are dreamers who make their dreams come true in\nmatter, and first among their dreams is of the planet in one piece.\nThey are naturally intolerant of barriers and partitions. They see\nahead a new social order vast and shining as a devachanic vision--the\nreal democracy of the future. They see that the new has come in not to\nkill, but to build. Theirs will be the spiritual heroics. Yet all this,\nof the greater patriotism, must not yet be spoken. It only alienates\nthem the more from those they must live with. Their arch enemy is\nIgnorance, personified so often in their elders.\n\nIt is noticeable that these young people are healthier, stronger,\nswifter, sharper, tougher, bolder and at the same time lighter and\nfiner than the passing generation. They have the _new healthiness_.\nThey belong to the open and are practically immune to disease.\nTheirs is the health of sun and wind and spirit--vitality instead of\nconstitution, something the old can never understand. Constitution\nis weight, solid, ungiving. Vitality is volatile, springy, electric,\nconstantly being given, constantly being acquired, self-refining.\nConstitution does not change; it accumulates all it can, then begins to\ndie....\n\nThe young women of this new Race are open, strong, eye-to-eye, free\nspoken. They are capable of friendships; they are not adverse to being\nwholly understood by males. They are not popular with ordinary women,\nwho surmise their superiority but comprehend it not. Deceit, jealousy\nand such common disturbances evident in the sex are unknown to them.\nThey have character and are lovely rather than beautiful. They are apt\nto go half way in their love-making, for who should know better when\nthe chosen father of their children arrives.\n\nAll of these people are bringers of true love. Love is their philosophy\nand religion. They listen to the heart as well as the brain. Others\nthink them cruel in their discrimination in mating. They take all or\nnothing--prodigious riskers, great sufferers, throwing even love's\ndream on the board to be played for, and laughing as they play. The\nslightest blight on the loved one is deepest agony.\n\nPerhaps the surest way of discovering these young giants is to search\nabout for the most sorely harassed children. Invariably they are put\nto it, to break into this day and generation. They fight their way up\nthrough all the banked-up ignorance and antagonism of unlit humanity.\nOften they are solitaires, coming and going with the secrecy of kings\nand eagles.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n2\n\nQUICKENINGS\n\n\nA few pages of drift first of all with the younger boys.... There\nis a lane of Lombardy poplars from the Lake to the interurban\ncar-line--a half mile. It is a lifting walk at any time, but summer\nevenings are wonderful with all the sounds and scents of a true\npastorale--lake-breath and meadow-lands, the whole sky to look at, and\nthe murmuring dissonance of the poplars. Often we walk to the car with\npassing guests. One evening a guest went away whom we loved very much.\nA lad of seven, named John, and I walked back from the car alone.\n\nHe was ignited. I felt this at last through his hand. I had been\nthinking about my own things all too long, missing the beginnings of\nhis talk.... He hurried forward in the dusk, speaking in a hushed rapt\nvoice. Because I had missed the first part, I said: \"John, I want you\nto write that--either to-night or to-morrow.\"\n\nAnd this is what came in:\n\n\nTHE MAGIC LANE:\n\nIt was at dusk. Two people left their tracks in Nature's dust road.\n\nLove is found on that road. It is the road of the mystics.\n\nThey leave their love in it; Nature kisses their feet.\n\nMany horses' feet have been kissed on that mystic road.\n\nThat mystic road will last forever.\n\nI long to walk upon that road of love.\n\nLove on that road will last forever.\n\nIt is all true love.\n\nOur friends have been met on that road of love.\n\nIt leads to the Hills of God.\n\nCertain spelling matters have been corrected. We pay little attention\nto spelling in the work here. The young ones learn by reading and get\nthe proper look of a word altogether too soon in many cases. There was\nanother high moment from John at the same time. The following three\nlines have stood out from the period with memorable magic:\n\n\nWONDER\n\nThe soft breath of the Mother came in through the window of vines.\n\nThe stars were shining like the face of the New Generation.\n\nMy spirit was away in the Hills. A noise at the door brought me back----\n\nJohn then fell into a psychological tangle which we found little\nprofit in following. By the \"Mother\" he referred to Nature.... The\nverse period has passed for the time. Around the age of seven, boys\nchange. Often, as in this case, they are not so interesting for a while\nafterward. John is coming nine now and is writing \"action\" stories with\nall the worn and regulation props and settings. The early tendency will\nreturn with a dimension added. All transitions are times of disorder,\nbut they are followed by larger areas and truer fulfilments of order. A\ncloud falls upon the sanctuary, but when it is dispelled, one perceives\na lifted dome, bright with its new cloth of gold.\n\nI am struck every day in dealing with young boys how wisdom and beauty\nand truth can be inculcated in their lives, without pain and strain to\nthem, and with great profit to the teacher. The young mind is quick to\nchange. It has not grown its pharisaical ivory....\n\nThe sanction of a boy must be won on a physical basis. A man must know\nwhat the boy knows and go him one better. The man must understand boy\npoints of view, but never expect the boy to be puerile. Parents of the\npast generations have had the steady effrontery to expect very little\nfrom children. \"Why, they are only children!\" has done more to make\nfor vacuousness and drivel than any other visionless point of view,\nnone of which has been missed. There is a difference in ages, to be\nsure. The child's mind has not massed for use the external impacts\nof twenty or thirty years of life in the world, but there is also an\nImmortal within--a singer, hero, builder, or a teacher possibly, eager\nto manifest through the child's fresh mind, fervid to bring the mind of\nthe child to its subjection, for the expression of its own revelations.\nIndeed, the parents themselves are enjoined to become as little\nchildren. In arriving at this wisdom and humility, they may suddenly\nfind masters in their own children.\n\nThere is also a lad here of seven named Tom. Yesterday I found him\nbeside me on the sand, down by the water's edge. I began to tell him\nabout the Inner Light that we all carry. You can talk over a child's\nhead, if your words are choked with mental complications (which is apt\nto be second-rate talk, anyway), but you seldom are out of reach of a\nfine child's grasp when you speak of spiritual things. He was sitting\ncross-legged, folded hands between his knees--a little six pointed\nstar--head and shoulders the three upper points, knees with folded\nhands between, the three lower. He was bare from the waist up and\nthighs down, and brown as the honey of buckwheat.... I told him that\nthe seventh and perfect point of his star was within; that if he shut\nhis eyes and kept very still, putting away for the present all his\nthoughts about himself, his feelings, his wants and his rights--looking\ninto himself as one would look ahead for a lamp in the night, listening\ndeep within, as one would listen for the voice of a loved friend,--I\npromised that at last he would see what the three wise men saw--the\nStar in the East. He need only follow that Star and be true to its\nguidance to come at last to the Cave and the Solar Babe.... After that\nI hinted that I would come to _his_ feet and listen.\n\nTom felt that it was worth trying for at once--shut his eyes, turning\nall thoughts and gaze within. He held the posture long.... I have\nmarvelled again and again at the quickness with which the child-mind\nattains to concentration so essential for all original production.\nThe little ones have no mad emotional lists to sort out and subdue;\ntheir wants are simple \"yes\" and \"no\" in so many cases. Indeed, they\nare spared the struggle of becoming as little children.... Tom held\nthe posture, until I was actually tense from the strain of waiting and\nkeeping my thoughts from calling his.\n\nIt was a picture--sun-whitened hair, long yellow lashes, brown body\nwith a bit of babe's softness left to it, and glorious sunlight. He\nopened his eyes at last saying that he had the door, where the light\nwas, almost opened, when a fly bit him.\n\nI thought of the perfection of the instance of the mind's\nwaywardness--the coming of the Master spoiled by a fly bite.... Tom\nwill search for his Star every day. It is strange that he is closer\nto the hill-pastures around Bethlehem, under seven, than for years\nafterward.\n\nTo learn concentration in mid-life after the world \"has been put\nthrough a man,\" is an ordeal at best; and yet we are by no means\nmasters of ourselves, nor capable of significant achievement until the\nbrain can be stilled at will of its petty affairs (the first aim of\nconcentration) and becomes the glad servant of the \"giant\" within.\n\nA little later I saw Tom on the back of a huge black walk-trot\nsaddle-horse of show quality--passing up the Lane at a fast clip, his\nfeet half way to the stirrups, holding on to the saddle with one hand,\nthe bridle-rein in the other. A year or two ago I should have been\nafraid to permit that, but we manage now to relieve the young ones of\na large part of our fears for their welfare. Children have enough to\novercome from their parents. Frequently the New Age young people have\nto master their heredity before they begin upon themselves.\n\nLife is a big horse to ride, so often a black horse. It is well to\nstart children free and unafraid. We do not let them dwell in thought\nof pain. We do not permit tears. We inform them early that to be sick\nis a confession of uncleanness, that lying is for the use of cowards\nonly, and that to be cruel marks the idiot.\n\nWe are occasionally serious over repeated failures, but we laugh over\nthings done well. Tennis has unfolded marvellous possibilities in the\ntraining of will force. Children are shown that there is a mystic\nquality to all the perfect games--that the great billiardists and\ntennis and baseball players perform feats in higher space, whether they\nknow it or not. There is the essential ideal first in the making of the\nathlete as in the making of the poet. The great moments of play require\nfaculties swifter and more unerring than the human eye or hand or mind.\nAsk the master of any game if he had time to think in pulling off the\nstroke that won. It is inspiration that he uses quite the same as the\npoet in his high moments.\n\nEducation is the preparation of the mind to receive and answer to\ninspiration from a plane above. The more you develop merely the brain\nof a child, the more he is detached from the great principles of being,\nthe more also is he closed to the real, and subjected to the danger of\nactual lesion and sickness. The more you develop the spirit of a child,\nor rather give the significant One within an opportunity to come forth\nand _be_ the child, the more you make for beauty, health, goodness and\nglory of bodily life.... A lucky day when you start really to associate\nwith your children, luckier still when you undertake the work of\nteaching them incidental to your own work. Then and there, you begin to\nrealise that children are close to a source of things that you cannot\ntouch. Presently you realise that they are teaching you....\n\nDay after day I have studied and practised the development of the\nchild from within outward. I have seen the capacity to synthesise and\nassimilate mere mental matters developed in a year, by training the\nmind from the centre of origins outward, that mental training alone\ncould never accomplish. The mind itself becomes vigorous and avid and\ncapacious and majestically swift. It is trained to express its true\nself. That is power--that is king-play. This sentence covers the whole\nmatter:\n\n_The perfect way to develop the mind of the child is to teach him to\nsit and listen at the feet of his own master, the Soul._\n\nThe right to live and to bring the laughter of power to the days must\nbe won afresh each morning. No two days alike. We make ourselves\nimpossible to children of the New Age by trying to confine them in the\nlaws and rules of yesterday. The young people whom I serve live in\na different intensity. Their interest flags if I repeat, if I fall\ninto familiar rhythms. Continually they spur me on. I think, after\nall, great teaching is the capacity to feel what the younger minds are\nthinking. If we are too coarse to catch the first warning of their\nresistance, they slip farther and farther from our grasp.\n\nIt would not seem possible to hold American young people with spiritual\naffairs; yet this is done daily. We call the Unseen--the great gamble.\nI have shown how all else betrays--how all matter is a mockery at the\nlast--that even love and friendship fail for those who are called to\nweep and worship wholly at the tomb of the body.... The truth is out:\nThe beginnings of real teaching is in making the Unseen interesting and\ndramatic.\n\nWe dwell upon the mystic white lines which connect all things--the\nsources of daring and beauty and creativeness. I ask my young people\nwhere they were--when they did any rare and improved bit of work, when\nthey felt like great comrades, met some magnanimous impulse, arose to\nsuperb instants of play, or when in Chapel the big animation touched\nus all and set us free. They always answer that they were _out of\nthemselves_.\n\nThat's a secret of the new teaching again--to lift the students out\nof themselves. Men take to drink or drugs for this same reason: men\nand women set out on the great adventures, pleasures and quests for\nthis. We hunger and toil for this freedom; we suffer and adore--to get\nout of ourselves. Mental teachings tie us in more firmly. The teaching\nhere--and no two days alike--is to startle and encourage the young\nminds to arise and live and breathe in that lovelier and more spacious\ndimension which at least borders upon the Unseen. The doors open and\nshut so softly. One does not know he has been out--until he is back\nwith strange light in his eyes and in his hands a gift from the gods.\n\nThe essential spirituality of the new teaching must not be confused\nwith religious affairs as they are known and exploited in the world.\nYou cannot teach the New Age religion of the world's kind. It has\nits own. No dry as dust sage will do. A snort will answer your\nsanctimoniousness; flexible science will reply to the abysses of your\nlogic.... You must be the consummate artist if never before in your\nlife, to teach the beauty of the soul to youth. The young workers of\nthe new social order will never bring forth their great harvests from\nyour _reflected_ light. You must be spontaneous--you must flood them\nwith pure solar gold; you must show them by your life and your work,\nhow you come and go into the Unseen.\n\nThere is no rest.... One commands his disciples to go forth at last.\nThe teacher strides forward faster when they cling. He tells them\none day they must race the gamut to follow him; and the next day he\nputs another in his place and begs to be allowed a cushion in the\nmidst of the children.... We hold them by setting them free--the first\nlaw of love. All unions of the future--in trade and friendship and\nmatrimony--will be founded upon the principle of freedom; and this is\nthe essence of the new teaching--to liberate the children into their\nlarger and God-quickened selves.\n\nNo rest and no two days alike.\n\nA Bob White called me this morning across the uncut hayfields at the\nedge of the lake-bluff.... His two smooth and patient notes seemed\nto contain the secret of putting off all fret and fear and unrest.\nHe seemed to ask if I had not done this already--had not yet put all\nboyish and merely temporal things away? \"Not yet?... Not yet?\" he\ncalled the question.\n\nI answered that I would try again, and I set out straightway to be\nhonest once more with the world, with the soil and with myself. I would\nbegin with the clay again to be clean--to rise and think and dwell in\ncleanliness, to think no thought, to perform no action second-rate--to\nbegin with the Laugh again--the warm laugh of conquest that always\nopens some inner door to fresh powers--to arise afresh in the glory\nand gamble of the Unseen.... I returned and saw the young ones one by\none--from Tom and John up to the men and women--doing their work. I set\nabout mine with a laugh and called the day good. The teacher knows best\nwho is taught.\n\n\n\n\n3\n\nCONQUEST OF FEARS\n\n\nAn interesting boy of ten and I have been much together in the open\nweather. We have learned many things, but nothing more important than\nwhat a sham Fear is. I do not mean that we take chances or that it is\nwise to risk life or limb. Fine discrimination is back of all training\nin the arts of life; still we certainly have found that Fear is a\nwaster and diminisher of beauty and power--and that it can be mastered.\n\nAbout the most fascinating thing that life has shown me is the way in\nwhich fine examples of the younger generation learn the deeper matters\nof life--matters of self-mastery which make the very presence of a\nlad significant to a stranger, and which formerly were supposed to be\nsecrets for the sons of kings alone.\n\n\"Do you fear anything?\" I ask. \"Look deep. Listen deep--do you fear\nanything?... It's like the pain that tells you of a weakness or\ndisease. Fear is an unerring reminder of a task of conquest ahead for\nyou. That which you fear most is the thing to conquer first.\"\n\nThere had been much of this talk of Fear before a laughable personal\nexperience showed me how much I asked.\n\nI crossed a mesa and came to an abrupt drop-off--two hundred feet\nsheer. It astonished me. I hadn't experienced anything like this quiver\nof horror for years. All members and muscles bolted at the thought of\nadvancing closer to the edge. I sat down to think it out. It never had\noccurred before that I _wasn't_ my nervous system, and must not let it\nget me down.\n\nThe more I thought, the more I perceived that I must do the thing I\ndreaded so. In fact, I had told trusting young people that they were\nnot their bodies, not their emotions, not even their minds--that these\nmust be made to obey. Here I had a chance to prove if I were less in\naction than talk. I forced my fluttering young self to the edge....\nDizziness--wobbly limbs, fancied shoves from behind, the call of the\nhuge shadowed space below, a queer sense of parting in mid-air, the\nbody thumping down, another and liberated self gladly spurning the\nground--all these symptoms of panic followed swiftly.\n\nI held until calm came, and I then could study this little coil of\nforgotten fears--a civilised mess.... The weakness was absurdly easy to\novercome after the will was once aroused. There's no end or limitation\nto will force when awakened. The greater the man, the more awe he has\nfor this subject. There's a glow that follows conquest of any kind; the\nmere call of the will to action brings a sense of power in the heart.\nThere is no way more speedily to dispel pain, anger, passion, fear, or\nany of these tentacles of personality--than to summon the power of will\nto instant action. The particular matter of this precipice showed me a\ntrick about calling up the force--priceless to me afterward in bigger\ntests, and for opening the way of self-conquest to boys.\n\nOne must decide what one wants to do--then carry it out to the death.\nDiscrimination, art, all culture and knowledge may be brought to bear\nin making the decision--but after that, it must be carried out--just\nthat.\n\nFears belong to the abdomen. You can feel them there. They are quicker\nthan thought. Perhaps you had a twinge of nerves over some sight or\nsound or odour, before your mind could tell you what you were afraid\nof.... I have often told the young ones here--listening a bit to my own\nvoice--that there isn't anything living or dead, phantom, shell, or\nliving soul, that has got the authority to make the spirit of man quail.\n\nCourage is spirit.\n\nMost people don't care to try to deal with it; they let it have its\nway.... Do you recall the fears of the dark room as a child--fear\nalways stealing behind--upstairs alone, the rush to the light, almost\nscreaming tension?... I heard a patter of steps the other evening and\nknew the whole story--a boy of seven. He had been sent upstairs without\na light. I sent him back, told him to stay there until he got himself\nin hand--to stay in the dark and think the bogie down. He was well\nafterward.\n\nI have known some under-fire work. A man soon gets himself in hand\nto look straight at a white-fringed trench. Fear of sharks furnished\nanother test. From a child the deep-sea devourers had an exquisite\nfascination for me--to be cut in two under brine, white belly,\nbackward mouth, black-rimmed, hairy pig eyes, the double-rows of\nteeth.... Pacific Islanders swim in the same harbour with fourteen-foot\nscavengers, careless of whole schools of monsters, yet scurry to their\nboats at the sight of one solitary, _different_ fin. I had seen the\nso-called, man-eating brutes, \"grey nurses,\" dim grey horrors with dull\nblack spots. A well-fed imagination also came into play.\n\nI went swimming in the surf with a splendid Australian chap--a doctor\nhome from the trenches.... He left me back in the surf lines and\nstarted out to sea. I finished my swim decently in toward North\nAmerica, and lay on the strand. From time to time off in the sunset I\nsaw my friend's head.... I was glad to grab the beach-comber when he\ncame in.\n\n\"It's all perfectly sane and splendid,\" I said, \"and I'm glad to have\nyou back for supper with us, and the billows out yonder are doubtless\nall that you say, for an afternoon's lie-up, only I venture to\nask--what if a grey nurse should happen in from the lower islands?\"\n\n\"You don't think about them,\" he said.\n\nThat's about all there is to the fear subject. You don't let it get\nyou. There is nothing worth fearing in or above or under the plane of\nmanifestation.... So I tried that out in deep water. The old horrors\nsuccumbed like the fear of the precipice, but not so readily, quite.\nOne can imagine keenly in the dim deep; the touch of sea-weed quickens\nall the monsters of the mind....\n\nThere's nothing fit to be afraid of, unless it is the _self_. When we\nget the ape and the tiger, the peacock and the porpoise, the lizard\nand the shark and the carcajou of our own natures mastered, there\nisn't anything left to do but to tally them off outside, a friendly\nfinish with them all. No menagerie is complete as man's, and each of us\nfavours some species from time to time.\n\nI have thought much about fear. In another place I told how we have\novercome inertia; how we developed senses through the hard administry\nof fear and hunger, anger and the rest. Now, however, these must be\novercome.... One of the last physical fears to let go in my case is\nthat for the hangman's rope. I think Roger Casement really wanted the\naxe in preference to the hemp. Steadily facing a repulsion, it surely\nvanishes.\n\nThe point of it all is that you can teach self-command to the\nchildren.... I took a girl of fourteen to my precipice--left her there\nstanding on the very edge. After a few minutes I called. Her face was\ncalm as if she had gazed from a porch....\n\n\"Did you feel any fear?\" I asked.\n\n\"Only yours for me,\" she answered.\n\nIt was very true. I had the thing whipped for myself, but it had been\nhard to leave her there.\n\nFinally I took the smaller boys out for a test. They didn't know I was\ntesting them. Children haven't the fear of height such as we put on. I\nrecalled a score of episodes of my own boy-days, in which I startled\nthe elders by Sam Patch imitations. Also I have put the young ones\nthrough some deep water affairs....\n\nYou may not be able to get it quite--but all fear is illusion. Every\ninner beast mastered makes us stronger. These animals within are our\ncosmos to rule. We do not know how beautiful they are until we lose\nour fear for them. Boys and girls here are learning these things and\nputting them in action.\n\nThe kingdom of heaven is also within. Fear, passion, anger, poverty,\nand the like--all represent areas of our own kingdom not yet brought\nunder perfect cultivation.... After the emotional and physical\nconquests come the psychic ones--hard matters of mastery pertaining to\nthe heart and mind--to know, to do, to dare, to keep silent--then the\nfinding of the hidden treasures of the subconscious, mystic fleets that\nsail those dim seas, as yet uncharted for most of us.... After that,\nthe Soul. At last we must be potent enough to stand eye to eye in the\npresence of the King Himself.\n\nFrom looking steadily over an escarpment of two or three hundred feet\ndrop, to gazing at the world from the forward cockpit of an airplane\nat two or three thousand feet, isn't such a long step as you would\nimagine. The fact is, I was in no way terrified in my first flight, and\nfear certainly crawled me full length as I stood that time at the edge\nof the mesa. Our young people have the call to test the new dimension\nof wings. This zeal corresponds in a unique way with the new education.\nIntellect stays upon the ground. Intuition is the lifting of the wings\nof the mind.\n\nI had already begun to make friendly visits to an aerodrome at the edge\nof the Pacific when the following letter came from the Abbot,[2] who\nis now seventeen and in New York:\n\n... Perhaps Steve told you that I had a ride in an airplane about three\nweeks ago. Man! 'Tis the place for me! Next summer, soon as school\ndissipates, I attach my name to the Royal Flying Corps. The psychic\neffect of a flight is wonderful--like travelling over a very tall\nbridge. The Atlantic coast for many miles lay in profile as a map, the\nroads stretched as thin mathematical lines; forests as darker shadows\nof the earth; New York as a blotch of smoke and curious patchwork.\nFor twenty minutes we sailed around and around, just as you've seen a\ngull pinion, then we came to earth; waited until it got dark, then up\nagain.... Lights of the aerodrome lay like jewels upon the earth, but\nup, up we went, faster and higher, the roar of the propeller providing\na steady nervous outlet. I could shout my lungs out--I had to relieve\nmyself of the excess thrill.\n\nThen what should happen? Red, a tiny rim, like the disc of a golden\ndollar, the sun began to lift up from the horizon again. The higher\nwe went, the higher it lifted, until there it hung, as a golden bulb,\na swollen orange off in the mighty stretches,--pure, golden,--while\nbelow twinkled the town's lights. 'Twas the fullest, richest, most\nbrimming moment I've ever had. The awe of the cosmos overtakes the\nheart and lays down its stupendous laws. The distance between sun and\n'plane seemed a golden pathway that ever could absorb your flight. I\nwas aware only of worshipping God, and that roar of the machine made\none think of the roar of the planets, comets, meteors, all the suns,\nroa-oa-ring. What a romance! Finding the sun!\n\n... No discussion of the fear element whatsoever in the letter....\n\n    [2] Fred Jasperson.\n\nThe old thrills won't do for the new race. I took a pair of\nscreen-trained young ones to a circus recently and became absorbed at\ntheir mild boredom. Alcohol is too slow and coarse for the wastrel\ntendencies of the modern hour. The sad ones of the new generation\nuse high potency drugs to forget the drag of time and space. A new\ndimension is required in all things. The young men of the new race make\nlight of our old dreads and are learning winged ways to heaven and to\nhell.\n\n\n\n\n4\n\nTHE STUFF OF COMRADES\n\n\nI wonder if I can make clearer, by turning a few different facets in\nthis chapter, what we mean by friends, comrades, the spirit of things,\nand love not as an emotion but as a cosmic force. Many days I have\nfaced a Chapel, as I face this day's work, longing to bring in closer\nthe dream of the new social order, yet dismayed by the limitations\nof words and my own mind, trained so long in the life of the old....\nI would begin to talk, drawing the young minds to mine through an\nintimate revelation of the heart, then presently lose the sense of\neffort, even the sense of thought--and an hour would pass in the joy of\ncommunal blessedness, because we were one.\n\nMan is not getting larger, though he is continually holding more.\nThe human brain, after it reaches a certain age and size, may gain\nthereafter a conception of the universe without altering the size of\nthe hat-band. There is a continual condensation at work within us\nmentally and physically. We take the cream of the thing, and throw the\nrest away. The wiser and the more inclusive we become, the more we take\njust the spirit of a thing, and leave the bulk and weight behind.\n\nThis is true in our every refinement, in the clothes we wear, the food\nwe eat, the books we read and the friends we gather together. We become\nharder and harder to suit, because bulk and weight are common, but the\nspiritual extract of anything is slow to appear for us. The wiser the\nman, the more fastidious he is, and this does not mean that he is a\ncrank. The excellence of fastidiousness is not in eccentricity but in\ninclusiveness. In the spirit of the thing, he sees all. From the spirit\nof the thing, he expresses in his own way any part. He can array whole\nhierarchies of facts from the spirit of the whole, but mainly he leaves\nthe facts in reference-libraries, where they belong and are quickly\navailable, and stores away in his working faculties just a drop of the\n_oil_ of a subject or a breath from its essence.\n\nThere are those who believe that the soul of man is made up of essences\nof experiences of thousands of lives--yet the refinement of the soul\nis so spiritualised that the best surgeon cannot find the little\norgan. He knows the brain, which is made up of the stored experiences\nof but one life, but because the soul is so small or so diffused,\nthe surgeon is very apt to say that there is no such organ. And yet,\nwe all know there is knowledge and power behind us, which drives us,\nin our greater moments, to utterances and action entirely without the\nscope of the brain. We may call this the soul, or the nth power, or the\nfourth dimension--the name doesn't matter.... Listen, if I write well\nto-day--I mean well for me--if I rise to the opportunity at all, it\nwill be because I am writing things which my brain doesn't know.\n\nI yearn to make this still clearer.... The rose, which is the highest\nevolved of flowers, includes all the evolution of plant-life of its\nline beneath; the same with gold among the minerals. The fact that each\nis the highest necessitates that. In the same way, man includes Nature\nand the lower creatures, in that he is the highest. This is easily\nproven to you when you recall that a child in the womb passes through\nall states of creature evolution. That period is, in a wonderful way, a\nreview of the evolution of the world.\n\nThe mere fact that the higher one climbs, the farther one can see,\nproves it again. This is a law. The scent of a rose is the sublimate\nof all plant odours; and the spirit of man is the refinement of all\nknowledge and experience beneath.\n\nThe higher man ascends, the more inclusive. To heal another, the\nphysician must be able to include the other. Evolution is continual\nrefinement--the drawing unto ourselves of the spirit of bulks of\nmatter. I stood upon a bluff overlooking the ocean recently, and a\nbreath of the south wind awakened in my mind the story of one whole\nsummer; others have listened to forest trees or the humming roar of\na distant city, or the rush of a great river, and found in them the\naggregate of all Nature's sounds in one tone. This is the magic of the\nspirit of things.\n\nIn all philosophy, there is no difference of opinion as to one fact,\nthat man is unfolding a microcosm within himself, including in his\nconsciousness more and more the Idea of the Universe. The cosmic\nconsciousness, which a few have attained, is the actual perception of\nthe externals of the Plan.\n\nThe cream of anything includes all the parts. The cosmic mind must\ninclude the essence of all arts and experiences and facts. Just as the\nrose and the man and the grain of dust are potential with all beneath,\nthe highest man, the cosmic intelligence, is potentially the cosmos in\ncontaining the Idea of it.\n\nThis idea may be contained in and expressed outwardly by some great\nsingle, all-including, all-mastering emotion--such as love. And now we\nare in a region where there can be no difference of opinion; at least\nI have never heard disputed what is the greatest thing in the world.\n\nThere are all kinds of love. The simple man loves simply--himself,\nhis woman, his children and his animals. The love of the cosmic\nconsciousness breaks forth in a deluge upon the race, because it\ncomprehends and includes all beneath. This great outpouring is formed\nof earth, air, water, fire, sunlight and all winds, all facts, all\nexperiences, all arts, light of the moon and stars and all glowing\nthings under the sun, all sounds and scents and pictures, all ardours,\nand sympathies and tolerances. Its outpouring is action, and is of\nitself creative. This is the _OM_. Such a love leavens and impregnates\nall things, because it understands and includes all things. It unifies\nall separateness; it enfolds all intelligence with intuition; it unites\nall parts.\n\nThis brings us to that ancient and unassailable premise of all\nreligions--that God includes every part of the universe in being the\nspirit of it; that His idea of creativeness is expressed in one great\nsingle, all-mastering and including emotion,--which is love. We hear\nthe little children saying it, \"God is love.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n... We awaken the Ideal in ourselves first by imitating the virtues of\nothers. In the earlier days when to me courage meant physical action,\nmen passed in different fields, leaving an imperishable remembrance.\nI have often seen the expressions of those I loved and idealised as a\nboy, live again in the faces of my own children. John T. McCutcheon in\nLuzon, filling a reel of films, under a volley of fire at Binan, on his\nknees, working the camera with a whole brigade sprawled behind--gave\nme one of the finest early building blocks for the courage among men.\nHe also gave me an ideal of cleanliness: One evening, after a vicious\nday's march, and we were all ravenous, John T. left camp to find a\nriver. There he bathed with government bouquet,--made himself right\nwith himself, even to shaving, before meat and drink. His constraint\nlooked like mastery to me then. Grant Wallace was a big star of that\nservice--ideal in performance of friendship.... Young men at hand now\nare different. Not one of them lack in grip and grit. They reveal the\nnew thing in courage, the courage that begins where the courage of\nthe soldier ends. These have gone far into the mystery of their own\nkingdoms--rapidly becoming kings of themselves.\n\nThe world doesn't understand them. The Abbot[3] is a sensation in\nliterary matters at Columbia, but unplaced. The Dakotan[3] was said\nto be unfit for a soldier because he was twenty pounds under weight\nfor his height. He can leap five feet six, run or hike indefinitely,\nexhaust a cement-mixer, say \"stick\" in all tongues and \"quit\" in none.\nHe has the will and wisdom to make himself a new man over night--and\nyet his Government wants him served up just so, in pounds. There isn't\nany one loves America more than the Dakotan, whom we now call Steve.\nEven the young military surgeons will know before long that endurance\nis a matter of spiritual culture, that courage is spirit--that a man\nis well because of cleanliness of body and thought and organised\nwill; that he doesn't fail in a pinch because he is evolved; that all\nthe higher forms of life call for speed rather than strength, the\nlevitating force of spirit rather than the gravitating force of flesh,\nfor brain rather than brute.... Comrade stuff is the stuff of souls....\nI've studied them long and devotedly. I build my days upon the things\nthese boys show me. Less and less are we different from those who call\nto our hearts.\n\n    [3] These appear in _Child and Country_.\n\nThese young men do not think themselves out; they are not troubled by\nmisses or personal discrepancies. They simply are themselves. I have\nperceived that men of dreams and genius and action are in the larger\nsense free from themselves. The main part of their day's performance\nis a lifting out of the tangle of emotion and desire, into a large,\nunrestricted area full of calm daylight, where events and movements\nare seen in their relation to one another, not in separateness and\none at a time, an area also where inspiration is momentarily expected\nto strike. They do not analyse themselves. They do not hear their own\nvoices. They are not dismayed if they falter or drop from the key. The\nthings that most men do with care, and that occupy so much of the days\nthese young men perform automatically.\n\nMy own path was upward through an intense self-consciousness--the\nAmerican, not the oriental way. I lived with myself all the route. I\nobserved outward conditions and events, domestic, civic and cosmic; but\nat the same time observed their effects upon myself. I did not know\nuntil I was adult that there is a big receptivity of consciousness\nabove this--where intuitions play and weave causes and effects\ntogether--where the mind is more like a child's than a man's, or more\nlike a giant's, perhaps--where the big faith comes, and the warm laugh\ncomes, and man surpasses himself, but does not know until afterward, if\nat all.\n\nWarmth flooded into me as I touched this larger consciousness. It\nbecame clear as daylight--that a man is at his best only when out of\nhimself. I saw much of my misery and depression was the result of\nself-analysis. I was a better man when I let myself go utterly. And\nthis was exactly the thing that happened in moments of danger, moments\nof romance and friendship, moments of the self hurling itself outward.\nCapacity for these moments makes the Comrade, and indicates that love\nwhich is not a sentiment, but a cosmic force.\n\nAgain, you cannot describe a spiritual thing with these little tools\nand materials in black and white--just intimations.... If we are\nsweet enough inside, something of the song will come to us.... Two\nwords suggest it best. The first is _Comrade_, which has become a\nsilliness in a military sense, yet has a high and holy meaning to\nall reconstructionists.... I remember when the word first came to me\nwith a thrill, as a young lad going off to Cuban wars. It was burned\nout of me a few days afterward in a Sibley tent full of regular army\nsoldiers.... I remember the scorn with which I used the word all the\nyears--or avoided using it--until slowly, smilingly, its new dimension\nopened, hard as a diamond, and as clear--its meaning in work and world\nand women, its new meaning to Russia and India and China and America.\n\nIt seems to say _Equality_. It's a kind of deep drink of spirit\ntogether, a word spoken at the last moment between men--an\ninner-shrine word, spoken with a smile, and a glimpse into the eternal\nindestructibility of the human heart. It expresses the love of the\nworld, not as it is felt in the brain, but in the breast of the soul.\nThe New Race has already washed it clean. It goes with a Cause fit to\ndie for. It belongs to men and women who can look at each other with a\nkind of prayer in their eyes and face death alone and laugh at it.\n\nThere's a fury, too, in the word--fury against the world, against\nthings as they are. It stands against the world-darkness now, and for\nthe day that is to be. It means love for the poor, a love for the\npeasants, a passion to serve and be tender to them, not to drive them\ninto the pits of death--a readiness to die for them without _cant_, a\nreadiness also to dare to live for them.\n\n_Comrade_--there's vision in it to strip off the masks of decadent\nnations, to open wide the sepulchres where the priests are still\nplotting to crucify the King; its strong magic will uncover the\nmonotonous crimes of commerce.... It signifies the spirit of the young\nmen and women who have already begun with gladness and fire to clear\nthe d\u00e9bris for the building of the New Age.\n\nThey will begin with the soil; they will know and love their own hard\npart. They will begin with the grass, with the rice, with the millet\nand the wheat, the clean things, the simple and holy things that the\npeasants love, with the songs that the peasants sing, the songs of the\nsoil and the rivers and snows--to build upon them the new heaven and\nthe new earth.... Above all, there's a laugh in the word--the laugh of\nyouth and power.\n\nThe other word is _Democracy_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n5\n\nJOHN'S THINGS\n\n\nHere are some of John's things, mainly letters to the Old Man.\nCalifornia called hard for the recent winter, and I went out a few\nweeks ahead of the Stonestudy outfit. John intended to follow within\nthree weeks, but overturned a kettle of boiling water in his lap, and\nwas unable to leave his quarters for three times that period. We all\nlearned better the hard lesson--to wait. The quoted word \"Play\" in his\nfirst letter refers to a little slip of paper which I had pasted upon\nmy typewriter. There has been a big tendency in recent months, in my\ncase, to let down all tension in relation to literary production--the\nidea being that when one has learned all the laws he is capable of, the\ntime is at hand when it is well to forget them. I have written several\ntimes throughout this book of an ideal emergence of Workman into\nPlayer. We learn many laws, to learn at last that there are none. We\ncome up through many slaveries to freedom.... I have not corrected all\nthe spelling in John's documents. The point most interesting is how the\nreal voice breaks through the mind of a child of nine from time to time.\n\n    DEAR YOUNERVERS[4] PAL:\n\n    We got your letter but it was not like you for it was not\n    type-written. Your old machine here is going grand. I am using it\n    now. It seems that I am with you all the time. _Comrad_ has meant a\n    lot the last four days to me. Comrad is everything in the New Race.\n    Masters will be comrads with every one.\n\n    That \"Play\" has it all, on your machine. \"Play\" is in all\n    somewhere. It is all like a big page and everything is woven on it.\n    There is a time when Comrads hafto go apart for a little while, but\n    not long. Their thoughts never go apart. They are always pulling\n    together, always weaving in thoughts and things that are the same.\n    It is wounderful--a parting. No sadness over it. It is the best\n    that could come, or it would not. We are held together. The pull of\n    the world is nothing to us.\n\n    It is hard to keep high, but we will. Fred[5] and I take a swim\n    every day. I go a hundred and fifty feet. Then we come up and rub\n    each other.\n\n    True Comrads have it all. Love from Comrad to Comrad.\n\n    [4] Universe.\n\n    [5] The Abbot.\n\n\n\n    PAL:\n\n    I woke up this morning kind of blurred, and got Irving and Steve to\n    come out and clean up the barn. They came and we worked there all\n    morning, and then went in for a swim. It was wounderful, the feel I\n    had when I got some clean clothes on and had the old dog[6] feeling\n    good. He is meditating over what a wounderful world it is now. The\n    stall smells sweet as a hay-stack.\n\n    Fred just got here and is working at your desk.\n\n    How was your morning? I never had a better one, and its the weary\n    old Sabbath, too.\n\n    Send for me soon now. It seems that it was a year since we have\n    been together. We can not do without each other. Send for me\n    _Soon_. I hold my hand high to you.\n\n    [6] The saddle horse.\n\n\n    DEAR OLD MAGIC FATH:\n\n    I am at Steve's desk in the guest room. It is the first time that\n    I have touched the keys of a type writer since the night I was\n    berned. It sure does feel good.\n\n    It has been much more wonderful to hafto have Patience for the\n    Meeting. It will be twice as great for both. I have needed you so\n    since I have been in bed. In pane and sicknes there is nothing that\n    you need so much as your Comrad.\n\n    I felt palms up to everything. It is all good. We love it all. It\n    all was something for us to get. It puts us higher after something\n    comes to us like that.\n\n    I have all the pores poring out love to you. We are always together.\n\n    YOUR SIDE KIKER.\n\n\n    DEAR OLD PAL:\n\n    Fred and I slept again in the Study. It looked like a storm last\n    night, but it did not come. Fred is a real Comrad. I got to his\n    heart last night. I do not know how. The roses have been wounderful\n    the last few days.\n\n    How is wounderful Mary? We are all sending Thoughts to you. We have\n    had wounderful full days lately, all heat. The town is howling\n    for rain now; they are never satisfied. We are always ready for\n    anything. It is the best. Our wounderful old mailtrain just crossed\n    the magic lane. I love trains more and more. They have a pull to my\n    heart. We love everything.\n\n    I do not feel on erth. I feel in space. Out of the draw of the\n    erth--_Free_.\n\n    Love always in my heart for you. I hold hard for the time that\n    Comrads pull together again for the road, us two. Jane is at my\n    hump all the time--so I will quit.\n\n\n    DEAR OLD COMRAD:\n\n    We are close this morning. I can feel your warm wounderful hand in\n    mine this morning. We are one. There is the holy breath--such a\n    great pull of thoughts and work to California. It seems as if all\n    the Comrads were calling me there. Then I hafto think of the one\n    thing--_Patience_. When you have mastered Patience, you are free.\n    All well here. My sores are getting better fast. I have wanted to\n    work lots lately, since I was in bed, but I could not. I lost so\n    many ideas in bed. Beds are a curse. I love you, Comrad. We need to\n    be together.\n\n    YOUR OLD PAL.\n\n\n    SUNLIGHT PAL:\n\n    A wounderful sun. A little late in getting up. The sun was out\n    full--a wounderful breakfast and a wounderful bowl of roses.\n\n    Every morning gets greater. The coming together again gets closer.\n    Separation is a great thing! You find that when it comes. It will\n    be so big and wounderful to come together on the shores of the sea.\n    The trains on the Pere Marquette line have a draw to my heart; the\n    whistle is so wounderful.... To have a bath in the salt water and\n    not in old Lake Erie.... It was another wounderful night with\n    Fred. He has done so much for me this time that we have been away\n    from each other.\n\n    He is so wounderful if you can get to him. I think I have got right\n    to him to the heart. I am awful lonesome for you and the sea.\n\n    I walked to the train track with Fred this morning. It was like the\n    day you were going away. I felt it was nearing the last walk up the\n    old Lane. Fred has the same feel. It swept over us--a free feel; it\n    was almost too much.\n\n    How is your Sisity-list coming? Mine is great. It is hard to get\n    along without you here. Old Abe was drafted, and we don't know when\n    we will see him. The sea and sunlight sweeping in the open door of\n    your work room! We will sure have some grand times. We will get\n    horses and have some more of them Moonlight rides. It will be great\n    to hit the old _Tie path_ Itself--with the[7] Welcome Mulligan\n    and the[8] Onerbel Chas. Lipton under our arms. The smell of the\n    burning bark and a caben in the Rockies! Oh, the open road. Life is\n    Life on the old Road.\n\n    That canyon must be a wounder, and the sea and the misty mountains\n    and the brown hills. You have it all. Oh man, that is the country\n    for everything.\n\n    I keep high for our meeting, Comrad of the Road.\n\n    [7] Frying Pan.\n\n    [8] Teapot.\n\n\nPROSE SETTINGS\n\n\nI\n\nTHE RED SUNSET.\n\nThe red sunset Died away like the close of a forest fire.\n\nThe Dusk ran through the mountains like a scarf of blue.\n\nThe Moon and old Jupiter took the Open Road together.\n\nThe others came out of the everlasting Blue Deeps.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE DESERT NIGHT.\n\nThe man at the camel corral was fixing the camels for the desert. Other\nmen were waiting at the front of the Temple. Another came forward with\nfour camels, a pack-beast and two riders. Then all were off over the\nSun Betin Sand.\n\nNothing but Sand and Harizen. Only the Arab who was ahead on the Old\nCamel knew the way.\n\nThey went on and on over the Everlasting Sand, the Sun Betin Sand.\n\n\nIII\n\nPINES.\n\nThe great wood is the Pines. The very whiff of them gives you the\nbreath of Nature, the great Mother of the planet, the mother of Love.\nHer breath is the breath of life and love, and the Mouziek of the world.\n\n\nTREAS (_California_)\n\nTreas are grate. They are so wild and wounderful. There is so many\nkinds here. The trea I love best of them all, is the U.K. Liptes. It is\nfragran; it has the sun and the erth all flowers and the swaying beauty\nof its great youth. I loved it from the first. It is beauty that stays.\n\nI went up to a grove the other day and along a little lone path--the\nmist and odor of them lingering in deep shadows. My feet broke the deep\nsilences and a Voice came and spoke soft to me: \"If you listen long\nenough you can hear----\" I think it was my Master speaking, for a glow\ncame around me, after He had spoke.\n\n\nTHE SONG OF THE SPERIT\n\nLife is not any good until you forget your boddy; then you get all the\npower of living, but you can't do anything that you feel like doing.\n\n\nLETHER:\n\nAll lether has a mystery in it. It is the animal's mystery. The misteks\nof the other world know it, and try to tell us. I have been told but\nmy mind has not received it. I will hafto wait until it does. I think\nI will know it all in a fue years. I will tell the rest of the world,\nif I hear it first. I would like to be the first to hear it.\n\n\nSTONES:\n\nThe whole erth was of stone.\n\nGod thought that he would make it something good. He sent the Old\nMother Nature down and she spent years and years, but she did not know\nwhat to put on it. She went up to God and He took her to a room, and\nshowed her the things that He had to put on the Erth.\n\nThey were sperits, so she got them one at a time and brought them down.\n\nIn the mean time she was making other things. They were seeds and she\nplanted these and they came up. It was wheat and barley and other\nthings like that. The sperits became people and took them for food, and\nthe old Mother is still putting things and bringing her sperits on the\nErth. This world is just about filled.\n\n\nTHE SPERIT\n\nAt night the Sperit goes to see God. It gets fresh to make the boddy\nfresh every morning. This is what keeps you clean. If you were all\nclean, you would not die. You go thru a hard life and what is not\nclean is burned off, and then you are pure to go to heaven. You rest\nthen until you are ready to come and be a saint.\n\n\nALONE\n\nThe sun beat hard upon the rocks.\n\nI was alone in the Power of the rocks. Nothing was moving.\n\nI was Alone. My Sperit was alone.\n\nIt was the loneliest place in the world.\n\nNo animal of any kind, not a bird or a snake--alone.\n\nNature did not even have cells of thought.\n\nThe power of the rocks was holden me there.\n\nA thought came over me that I had never known Home.\n\nAll of a sudden Nature spoke, and I was free from everything.\n\nI came back to the Father.\n\n\nEQUALS\n\nThere is a greatness in a man that treats his horse like his brother.\nA man is a beast when he beats his horse. He is of a lower Brivahen[9]\nthan the horse. The man who says to his horse that he is his equal, is\na great man, a master of animals.\n\n    [9] Vibration.\n\n\nBEAUTY\n\nWhen the New Race comes, there will be beauty--real beauty. Down thru\nthe ages people have talked of beauty, but they have not seen it\nreally, yet. It will come with the New Race--beauty in everything--in\nthe body, in writing, in talk, in love. Not love one, but all. The\nyounerverse Lovers will not only love each other, but they will love\nall. This war is the great clean up of the world. After it is all over,\nand the troops come all home together, there will be the great New Race\nwaiting for them with open arms--then all will be real beauty.\n\n\nTHE HOLD UP AND THE GET AWAY\n\n... It was the first time Denver Bill had come in without a cigarette\nin his mouth. They wanted to know why he wasn't smoking, but they\ndidn't ask.\n\nHe ordered the same drink and took it fast.... He chucked the chair\nover, grabbed the tellfon off the table and gave \"Hlo.\"\n\nHe said, \"Horse up here in five minutes.\"\n\nIt was there.\n\nHe was out of town in a minute more.\n\nDenver Bill stopped at a cabin where he had made ponmets[10] to rob a\ntrain at 7:45, and it was now 6:10. His friend was there. They jumped\non their horses and rode a quarter of a mile. The train whistled around\nthe curve.\n\n    [10] Appointment.\n\nThere was a shout. Denver called: \"Stop that engine!\"\n\nIt stopped slow.... Bill murdered the engineer, and then flew thru the\ntrain of cars. He grabbed the fifty pound gold box and jumped thru the\nwindow. A shot rang out.\n\nBill was pincked.\n\nThe man that he had come with played dirt on him because he went off\nwith the gold. Bill crawled across the field and laid in the hay stack.\n\nHe rolled the first cigarette of the day.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nLETTER TO THE ABBOT (from California)\n\n    DEAR OLD WIFE:\n\n    How are you coming? I was just up over the hill behind us, getting\n    two wounderful qwortz of golden honey. How is your type mill\n    pumping these days? I got a new story in my bean:--Have an old\n    fisherman that takes those forks and goes after crabs--have him\n    find a pot of pearls instead of crabs.--Think if it is done right\n    it would make a wounder.\n\n    When will you be out here? We will lead a pack trane over the\n    mountains! Oh, that is the old open road! Pack mules, they mean\n    it to me--a line of mules in the mountains and a couple of saddel\n    horses! That's the life.\n\n    I hope you have changed your mind about them airaplanes. I do not\n    like the Idea. But, old man, it is for the best, and nothing is a\n    mistake. Take it as it comes. Write soon, and make the pages fly\n    like dust to me. I need all that I can get.\n\n    Last night was our first bit of rain. Slept in an open window where\n    my face was sprayed all night with the wounderful cold drops of\n    spring. When I got up, I was feeling better than I ever did before.\n    I was all relaxed. I lay a long time just in the wounder of the\n    wounderful free air and rain. I got up and went down and washed\n    in more of the soft rain, and ate and went outside to come down\n    to my work shop. I stood in the wind. Everything around me was so\n    wounderful. All the trees and flowers were brighter. The hills were\n    a little damp. The birds were playing and drinking in the rain. The\n    ray of sun was just coming over the hill. I could almost hear the\n    breathing of the grass and erth. It was like a song, the great song\n    of spring and breathing of the world.\n\n    That is the way that the new generation will come in after the\n    world is washed and all countries are _one_. A Boy, young and\n    clean, will come in, whistling and breathing a Song of the New\n    Race.\n\n    YOUR COMRAD.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nANOTHER\n\n    WELL, WIFE:\n\n    Here I am pumping a little more of my vocabulary at you. I think\n    that I will go into the ocean and have a swim. It's dulce on\n    my wounds. What I want to tell you is about an old sea loafer\n    here--a big, black dog. He isn't any kind of a dog--nothing but a\n    world-man-dog, he is. He is a lover of the sea and sand. He goes\n    down with us every day. He is a pal for the road. He can't follow\n    the saddel like Jack, but he can shore be a frend. I have lerned\n    him and he has lerned me. We stick close.\n\n    Well, pal of the sea and saddel, I am getting awful lonesome, but\n    I am with you all the time. I need your old paw. I shore keep high\n    for the Spring Coming. We will have a shack back in the hills all\n    alone, and drink tea and talk. Don't it sound good? I won't forget\n    it either, not until we have it. We have planned it for many ages,\n    and we will hafto have it--old pal of the moonlight rides.\n\n    I am close and always your Comrad.\n\n\n\n\n6\n\nVALUES OF LETTER WRITING\n\n\nStonestudy particularly is a shop for writers. A man is at his best in\nwriting to the one who pulls the most from him. The thing is to pour\nout. The pursuit of happiness is a learning how to radiate. Happiness\nitself is radiation--incandescence.\n\nYou say you write to the world. A composite? An abstraction? These\nwill not draw forth your best and greatest.... You pass a thousand\nfaces in the town, and are suddenly torn by one? Do you think that\nthe unmanifested, upon which the thousand faces sleep so far as you\nare concerned, is capable of bringing out your wisest or tenderest\nexpression, as is this one face pressed against the very window of your\nhabitation?\n\nAs a workman, as an artist, as a player, one must give his best, one\nby one, to individuals first, before he arouses the force to set\nthe table for the world.... It is important for the young writer\nto answer exactly certain listening attitudes. I think, in a story\nmood, of the shepherd fires--the endless droning tales of Persia and\nPalestine--camel bells, bearded men in white hoods, occasional weary\nmovements of women in the tent openings as the evening passes to dead\nof night. The tale-teller is making his listeners see more or less\ndimly something _he_ sees--something he has heard and visualised,\nbetter yet, something he has lived. The finer his telling the more\ncompletely he has lived it. The more listeners pull from him, the more\nexcellent his animation, his art. A speaker, accustomed to give himself\nspontaneously to an audience, said: \"If I don't give you what you\nwant--if I am not at my best to-day--remember it's apt not to be _all_\nmy fault.\"\n\nSoil and seed in all things.\n\nWe prepare ourselves with much misery and massed experience to tell\nour story of life. How strange that we should not have reckoned with\nthe fact that all this preparation is only half.... Really, it is as\nimportant to think to whom one is writing as what to write about. I've\nbeen afield with many young men, soldiers and the like. Their best and\nhighest moments afield were spent in writing home, or possibly to the\ngirl they left under the beeches or sycamores. We should write a myriad\nor two love letters, before we are ready to write for the world.... By\nwriting and dreaming and travelling and living toward the one, we learn\nhow to focalise our forces. Having done that, we are ready to diffuse,\nto radiate. Sooner or later the _one_ point will be taken away.\n\nDon't be distressed; it is only for the time. But the love we have\nlearned with one must be turned upon the many. It's all a love story.\nThe whole universe is that. The stillness of the sun in relation to the\nplanets tells the first story of radiation--love a cosmic force, not\na sentiment--all one big, brave tale.... The real priest is trained\nto draw out, to furnish understanding,--inclusion. One can talk well\nto one who includes him. As professional essayists and story-tellers,\nwe are only beginning to learn that we must talk or write to some one\ngreater than ourselves, to set ourselves free.\n\nThe wonderful power of letters begins and ends just here.... Write your\nstory or your essay to one who contains you--to one who draws your\nbest, to one who sets you free. You can ascertain your relation to\nanother by your mood as you prepare to write. The more you practise the\nart, the more sensitive you are, the more you realise that no two moods\nof yours are the same, as you write to different people. One draws\nhumour, one irony, one a tendency to exaggerate, another deeply to be\nserious and reformative. This should reveal the whole secret. Choose\nyour complement for the portrayal of a mood.\n\nThe thing we call our style is merely the evidence of that which\nwe have chosen to work toward, plus our particular personality. We\nshould work to that which sets us free. Certainly one cannot be free\nin another's form. There are fixed vehicles for expression--novel,\nessay, poem, infinite departments of each, but the fact remains that no\nworkman or artist or player can be utterly himself, who remains in the\nforms laid down by those who went before, or in forms prescribed by the\ngeneration he undertakes to express himself through.\n\nNo good workman ever accepts things as they are. To be the workman\nunashamed, he must be considerably beyond his generation in culture and\nacumen. He therefore finds the beaten paths--which are the easy paths\nfor the many--the most irksome paths for himself. He grinds long and\nhideously against the things that are, and thus becomes formidable,\nsince grinding makes the edge. The dullest part of the axe is held the\nlongest against the wheel.\n\nBit by bit, as the consciousness of the chosen workman expands under\nyears and ordeals, he casts off all the shackles, forms and prescribed\nnonsense of the trivial and material-minded. He breathes deeper with\neach unbinding, until he reaches the fair eminence upon which lies the\npriceless secret of all expression:\n\n_That there is no law for the pure in heart._\n\nHe reaches this point through many slaveries, and yet a child can\nbe taught the secret. The child must also be taught, at the same\ntime however, that the world is wrong and inferior in all its views;\notherwise the child will not have stamina enough to stand against the\nopinions of all elders of all times, much less those who sit at the\nsame breakfast table. Verily, the thing that Rodin and Balzac and\nCarpenter and Hugo and Chavannes and Nietzsche and Whitman gave their\nprodigious vitalities to learn, before their real work began,--can\nbe taught to the child, but the child must find his faith in his own\nspirit and some true teacher to set him free.\n\nIn the later aspirations beyond professional workmanship for the world,\nthe Players achieve that master freedom which detaches itself entirely\nfrom causes and effects in materials. They work as do those who are\nambitious, yet refuse to tie themselves in the least way to results.\nThey work to their Masters, to the Unseen.... All of which is pure and\nperfect liberation, but requires one trained in building with spiritual\ncauses and effects. We seek to furnish this training for a few who are\nready. It is the way to the inmost and the uppermost in all art and\nmysticism. We are set free here as expressionists of various kinds by\nwriting or painting or playing to those we hold dearer than ourselves.\nWe wouldn't be writing if we could be with them in the flesh--how clear\nthat is! The fundamental processes of our picture-making are quickened\nby our yearning. Here we touch an old and curious law, that you must\nhave separation for the true romance.\n\nWe learn to mass life into pictures or tones or tales.... All that we\ndo well shortens the grade for those who receive. If they are quite\nready, they won't have to make the mistakes we did--mistakes painful at\nthe time, but out of which we make humour now.\n\nA man brings a gift when he brings forth a good tale. He has done\nsomething with the worn-out tools of incident and experience which\nhasn't been done before. To do it well his telling is dependent\nupon his audience. His telling will be different for each listening\ngroup. The greater the artist, the less alike will be his methods of\napproaching different friends or comrades. Each will bring from him a\ndifferent tone, a different look to his eyes, a different grip of hand,\nand different order of unfolding his genius....\n\nThe most perfect bits of writing we have from the group of our greatest\nnovelists--is either in the form of letters or parts of work inspired\nby the influence of a woman's heart--some romantic and one-pointed\noutbreathing of their souls to one.... The great creative producers\nrarely found steady human companionship in one woman. No flesh was\nstarry enough to endure their idealisation; the break of their picture\nwas often the shattering of life itself. Experience forces us all at\nlast to take our idolatry from that which changes--to continue our\nlessons of love toward the Unseen. Lovers of the New Race seem to have\nlearned the agony of trying to find all in each other, of trying to\nfind the universe eye to eye. They realise at once that man and woman\nare but the two earth points of a triangle; that they safely may rear\ntheir passions and their transfigurations only to the pure point of\nunion above....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA man has found something when he cries \"Eureka!\" He loves something,\nwhen he pours out his heart to it. The first great struggle of the real\nworkman is to find a form that contains him--a form of expression that\nwill not maim his dream. It is never the form that has held another,\nthat has sufficed for another artist. A letter is one way to freedom. A\nwriter's style should set him free.\n\nThe enduring aphorisms and tablets and discourses of the Masters have\nbeen spoken to their beloved few. A man's sealed orders in the world,\nhis occult transcriptions from above the world, come in the form of\npersonal messages. Great documents of the future shall be written this\nway. We write many personal letters. One of my young comrades has the\nidea to gather together names of a score of mill-girls in New York or\nsomewhere, and write her heart to them--less to try to help them, than\nto ease her own heart, to tell her love for them. Radiation--that is\nhappiness. Mill-girls have been a dream of hers. She is full of force\nto pour out.\n\nIncandescence is happiness. All expression is happiness. Happiness is\ncreative. To work, to express, that is to radiate. The object is as\nimportant as the thing that aches to go forth. Choose the form that\nsets you free. To each his form.\n\nA tireless woman asked how she might serve. Her lover was lost in\nFlanders. We told her to write to the soldiers--to write her heart\nout in letters to soldiers--that she would save lives and start great\ndreams and bring the gold back to many grey mists--to be Mary the\nMother, the saint, the dream of the film-eyed fighting men--to love\nthem through the heart of her beloved. That is what focalisation leads\nto--to draw forth the great energies from our souls, to set us free,\nfirst to one, then to the world.\n\nWe learn to love the one--in order to give this love to the world. We\nlearn to love in matter for the moment, in order to become consummate\nartists and players in the soul stuff that cannot die. Again and again,\nthrough possessions and personalities--missing, destroyed or moved\naway--we learn to take the force of our outpouring from the mutative to\nthe changeless--making a divine bestowal at last of a clinging human\nneed--lifting from the idolatry of the flesh, which encloses all pain,\nto the love of souls which sets us free.\n\n\n\n\n7\n\nTHE NEW DANCING\n\n\nI have found true North Americans. A woman of twenty-seven, a mother\n(with a mysterious man somewhere) and a girl-child with the calm and\npower of Joan come again.... I needed a change, was tired of my house\nand my voice--close to the end of all human interest that morning as I\nset out for a walk up the edge of the Lake. On and on walking, until I\ncame to the little girl on the shore. She was making a frowning man in\nclay. She asked me if I were the Crusader, but answered herself while\nI was hoping to fit the dimension of that fascinating title. She had\ndecided that I wasn't.\n\n_North Americans_--I think of them so again and again--something great\nand calm and deep and beautiful, something arrived, at last, from all\nthe fusion--en rapport with nature, children of the light, living and\nabiding constantly in the essences of sunlight--with the humour and\ncertainty of Mother Earth about their ways--the cleanliness of earth\nand the sweetness of golden light in their house and mind....\n\nMind you, I had walked forth as one would wade out to sea in the path\nof the moon--actually yearning for a better land than this.... There on\nthe shore, after hours, was the child--her eyes turned to mine, putting\nme into the enchantment of the wise--stilling hate and ennui. We had\nwords together, the great awe of life stealing over me again after\nmany days. Her hand stretched forth to take me to her mother (this day\ncalled the Lonely Queen, for they live in an enchanted story-book).\nA climb to the top of the bluff and into the most fragrant and godly\nlane, a low house in the distance in the shelter of beeches--solitary\nand isolate beeches sheltering a human house, built for sunshine long\nago. Many pages would not tell of the lane and the house, the lawn and\nthe hives.... I want to touch the core of this inimitable pair that\ntook me in--poor but dining upon the perfect foods, so poor that they\nmake and dye the lovely things they wear--a kind of holy handiwork\neverywhere--perfume of summer in the house and in the heart of it a\ndeepdelved peace where broods a sort of lustrous dream.\n\nThe child is but seven--that is, her body and brain are but seven.\nHer talk with her mother is the talk of a pair of immortals.... Wheat\nbread and butter for supper, peaches of the mother's canning--a last\njar, she said, with comb-honey for sweetening and golden cream on\ntop. It was a repast for the mountain-top where demi-gods stray--all\nmiracles about us, Apollo just putting his steeds away, Vulcan smoking\nsombre and wrathful in the distance.\n\nCan you see me sitting down to supper in a true handmade house, at the\nhead of a God-made portal to the lake (the lane is nothing less) in a\ngrove of white beeches--lingering gold on the vines at the window, the\nmurmur of hives in the air, and these two mystic presences subduing\ntheir radiance to sit with me?... There's a little can of tea that\nis opened the last thing after the table is spread; the brass kettle\nbegins to sing, and the mother hovers over--a kind of sacred rite, all\nthis--then the dancing water is poured over the leaves and the room\nsoftly fills with the air of far archipelagoes. Roses of Ireland and\nFrance are in the room. Tearoses--some daughter of poetry must have\nnamed them.\n\n... Still I am telling you about _things_--not about _them_. I thought\nI should write you what they are, yet the longer I sit here, the more\ntestaments of their adorable lives appear, but their spirits draw\nfarther apart.... There is never a drone of talk where they are ...\nsentences and silences, the myriad voices of evening stealing into the\nhushes between.... I must get down to earth again. I must begin with\nthe grass and the shore and the magic which began when the child turned\nup to me from the frowning clay....\n\nI should like to report them moment by moment--to make you see, but\nthere is a fixed purpose in this chapter. Sitting apart from them that\nfirst night, I contemplated the North America of the future--a kind of\ndream that nestles within a dream--the Great Companions, superb men and\nwomen, the vastness of leisure, the structural verity of joy, a new\ndimension in the human mind, a new colour and redolence in the light\nthat plays upon the teeming world. Not for years had I been so near to\nthe dithyrambic.... I went out into the dusk and smoked a machine-made\ncigarette--not for worlds would I desecrate that room. I returned\ndrowsy--opened the casement windows wide to the stars. As I put out the\nlights, the sense came to me that the little room was as fragrant and\nsweet as a new-woven basket.\n\n... I awoke to low singing. The room was grey and seemed to lift\nwith me, and the walls to widen. It was as if I had caught the old\nhouse just waking from a sleep of its own. The phenomenon of the\nsinging lived in my mind. I don't know the song--a rapid bird-like\nimprovisation possibly--two voices hushed, but a vibration of clear\nliquid joy. I went to the window. The earth was still asleep--a\npearl-grey world of dripping trees in a kind of listening ecstasy--two\nbeings below on the lawn--a lawn that was grey with dew. It was like\nlooking down upon a cloud from the Matterhorn. These two beings--one\nin a veil of rose, one in a veil of gold--were dancing upon the cloud,\ndancing bare-armed and limbed, their voices interpreting some soft\nharmony that seemed to come from the break of day upon the sphere.\n\nIt was not for me--yet I could not draw back from the vines. I brought\nonly thankfulness to it--sharing the joy in the dim of a room, in the\ndim of a mere man's heart. Yet all I could contain came to me from\nthe mother and child. They knelt in the grass, the song more hushed,\nbringing up to their faces and shoulders hands that dripped with the\nholy distillations of the night--a wash in dew and day, their song a\nprayer, their dance a sacred rite.... I should have thought it the gift\nof dreams, but there was a starry track of deep green across the lawn,\nwhere their bare feet had broken the sheen of dew.\n\n... I dwelt with souls--that was the truth. I sat at breakfast with\nsouls, dew-washed, speaking to each other and to me from that long road\nof life which we lose for a squalid by-way when we put on the garments\nof the world.... They talked again about what the birds hear in the\nmorning. They said that what the birds sing is their interpretation\nof the great song of daybreak--that the earth does not meet her Lord\nSun in silence.... And then I knew that the song I heard was their\ninterpretation--think of it--a child of seven eating buttered toast.\n\nAnd I knew that power is a song--that the singing of the kettle is the\nsong of steam, that the inimitable _t'sing_ of an electric burner when\nthe current first charges through, is the awakening song of steel and\ncarbon to their native capacity and direction. The same is in the heart\nof a boy when he finds his task--the same is in the order of a master\nand in the making of his poem.... These two hear it--the song of Mother\nEarth as the floods of light pour out and over her from the East.\n\nHere was a mother who knew how to play. She had launched somehow\ninto a sphere of her own making--doubtless having found life of the\nworld insupportable. I had thought much about bringing up children,\nabout unfolding the child, and here it was being worked out with\nbrimming joy.... It was all too natural to be called education. It\nwas nature--it was liberation, rather--a new and higher meaning of\nnaturalness.\n\nI was almost afraid to speak. The life here seemed so delicate\nand delightful that comments would bruise the fine form of it....\nThey played together--that was the point. Play is a liberation of\nforce--great play is ecstasy. In it one rises to the _stillness_\nof production, wherein one bathes in mystery and potency and all\ncommonness is cleansed away. Those who reach this stillness are the\ngreat beings of the world.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen we finally open ourselves to any subject, we find intimations of\nit everywhere. I found presently that all the voices of the New Age\nhad designated the magic of the dance. It seems almost dull to declare\nthat I do not refer now to the dance as it is taught and used and\nexploited as a social accomplishment, but that in which the personality\nis subdued and quiescent, quite as absolutely as it is in all great\nmoments of production. One must give oneself. Music carries the\nsensitive soul into its own mystic region. A rhythm within answers to\nthe external rhythm--the two meet and mate--the fusion is bewildering\nbeauty.\n\nAs in all creativeness, the first law is spontaneity.\n\nThe great dancers of the future will _hear_ their own music--possibly\ngive voice to it as they give their body to the rhythm. There shall be\nno exact interpretation of song or sonata--at least, not until absolute\ngenius interprets the exact figure of each tone-set. This is impossible\nin a world of mutation. Accordingly, one who establishes a series of\nmovements to accompany a certain harmony, misses the meaning of the\ndivine improvisations which is the essential beauty of the New Age\ndances. One should dance as freely as one called upon to speak. And one\nwill neither speak nor dance greatly by prearrangement or following any\narbitrary form.\n\nThe very tone of the voice is different and deeper when one is caught\nin the spirit of spontaneity. The prime object of the new education,\nwhich includes dancing, is to set the soul free. Music is one of the\nmaster-lures to call forth the sleeping giant.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOne night a stranger[11] came to Stonestudy. She said she was called by\nthe way we were doing things, and that she hoped she had something to\nbring to us.... The next morning at daybreak, down on the shore, I saw\nstars and circles of young women and girls folding and bending together\nin exquisite tones of colour and song. Her gift was the new dancing.\nOver night she had captured the young people, bringing them a new joy\nin the world. For two or three months she remained with us and has\nsince established classes east and west--life given to the message of\nbeauty. With us her expression and magic has endured.\n\n    [11] Helen Cramp.\n\nThere is no way more swift to merge in the universal, than by the\nresponse to music through movement. Not dancing, which is a response to\ntime in music more than to rhythm, but the actual blotting out of self,\na spiritual exaltation which many religionists have sought and few\nattained.\n\nThe means is very simple; nothing strange or peculiar. It is the\ndropping of the human will so that the music may flow through. One\ndoes not move to the music then; one is moved by it. The objective\nmind ceases to operate and through the larger consciousness absolute\nBeauty streams. The response to the music may be totally different\nwith several pupils, but where the dancer is really lost to the\nobjective world, the movement is always true and satisfying to those\nwho watch. This is easy for those who are close to Nature and God, but\nit is fraught with difficulties for those who are over-mental or who\nhave been terribly repressed. In many ways the will is man's highest\nasset and it requires a supreme effort of the will itself to drop the\nobjective consciousness.\n\nThere is a technique of the dance to be sure, but it is designed only\nto free the body so that it may be a purer channel for the music, and\nto facilitate the effacement of self. Physical strength, agility,\nbeauty as mere beauty, are never sought, but only the revelation of\neternal harmony.\n\nThere is rhythm throughout Nature. Man often moves less gracefully\nthan the higher mammals. He has opposed his will to the law of the\nuniverse, for centuries abusing his ancient right, but through music he\nmay realise again the harmony of all. The dancer is radiant with the\nsplendour of the infinite and there comes an ecstasy into the spirit,\nof those who witness the transfiguration--the hush that one feels only\nbefore the highest art and purest religion.\n\nIt is reasonable to suppose that those who dance must bring back with\nthem into every-day living something of the beauty of those exalted\nmoments when they touch \"the white radiance of eternity.\" Here is\nnatural education, natural religion--a practical mysticism, the merging\nof self in the Infinite with a consequent fitness for daily living.\n\nSo the dancing of the New Age is but a different form of contemplation\nand production, by which the Soul becomes the creature--for the period\nachieving that blessedness which is above time and space, and dwelling\nin that dimension, where goodness, beauty and truth are one.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe new dancing is \"in the air.\" Like vers libre and all New Age\nrealisations and creations, its first essential is freedom. This is the\nmeaning of the word Democracy--equality, liberation. The very spirit\nof all that is new demands freedom. The deeper one penetrates, the\nlovelier the folds of this marvellous conception. There is no title for\nfriend or comrade, for child or lover--comparable to the assumption of\nequality.\n\nEquality--its power sings. It dances. When the last is said and done,\nwe all want the same thing, if we really knew,--goodness, beauty\nand truth, one at the top. There is joy in the fine new conception\nappearing now in all the arts--freedom first and last, even to\nlawlessness at first, but that will right itself more swiftly than\nsmugness, which has had its age-long and hideous trial.... To me, the\nhouse in the beeches slowly unfolds it all--the mystery of the cosmic\npeasantry of the future--that fastidious poverty, that delicate plenty\nwhich is perfection. These two, mother and child, mean the new dancing\nto me, and the New Race beside. I have not dared to go again, because\nI build incorrigible dreams, and this one especially is dear.... Yet I\noften recall their loveliness together.\n\nThe mother's beauty had turned to loveliness. It had more than the\nmystic chiselling of sorrow--it had passion, it had humour.... I feel\nthe need of telling you from time to time that I am not rhapsodising,\nthe need of reminding you, how weathered and drab my mind was, when\nI went up the shore that day. She made me think of grapes and olives\nand laurel-boughs; she seemed the sister to the child. All about the\ntwo were subtle, pervasive, ever-changing tests of the power of the\nsoul. The country people around did not think her extraordinary, much\nless beautiful. How much is revealed in that? Loveliness requires\ncertain vision, an interpretative spirit, and thus it is protected\nfrom the vulgar gaze. These good country people carry upon their faces\nand hands and persons picture-writing of secret sins and dreamless\nstolidity, and yet they are scandalised by this woman. You cannot\nimagine how sweetly it came to me that she had utterly lost the sense\nthat she was outcast.\n\nA lamp burns at her door every evening. I don't suppose it is seen\nthree times a month--yet the lamp burns.... There's a big wooden Cross\nin the room where they sleep--the child led me to it--a mat of grass\nbefore it, _kusa_ grass, who knows?... A great Cross, a much-worshipped\nCross, with spike-holes, the broken edges worn smooth.... The child\nwhispered to me that _she_ had been brought (when she was too small to\nknow) and placed on the mat at the foot of the Cross for her mother to\nfind; also that she came when the white clover bloomed.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n... It is only this way, bit by bit, that I can make the picture. I\nhave never before been so disturbed by the sense of inadequacy. The\nlight about their heads is all diffused like morning upon a cloud.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n8\n\nOLD PICTURES IN RED\n\n\nThere was a period between the second and third year of the war, when\nit seemed that the guiding, shielding spirits of the planet were slowly\nbeing withdrawn--leaving only the mockery of goods, the chaos of\nmultiplied things. But at the blackest, in the very hush of desolation,\nthe new breath stole in upon us, a breath of lilacs on the chill, dank,\nwintry air. Many now stand arisen, waiting the flash that changes the\nworld.... Five men were gathered in Stonestudy one evening; we talked\nof our parts, the best we could do in the clean-up. It was hard to look\nover the barriers at first; hard for an American to accept the fact\nthat he dare not say what he thought, nor write what he thought. It was\nhard to realise that we were prevented from expressing what we thought,\nby the very forces that had drawn us into this deep trouble. We who are\nthe distant generation of a party of pilgrims and voyagers who came to\nAmerica to find a free country, were strange and intolerant at first,\nwhen we felt the yoke of Europe settle upon ancient scar-tissue.\n\nWe discussed.\n\nA country is superb when one is unconscious of it, we said. One's\ncountry should be like one's health, part of the song of life. Suddenly\nto find the freedom of the past unremembered, the freedom of the\nfuture unglimpsed, to hear the loathly low beat of talk from groups\nof frock-coated Appetites, with heavy half-dead legs and heads like\npitching-quoits, settling our sacred future on the basis of steel\nand coal and margin and murder market; to feel ourselves clutched\nand borne forward with stub-nailed fingers in the stench of big\nbusiness; black-garbed shopmen pointing the way to the ports, urging\nand shouldering other people's children to the ports of the gunboats,\nadvising the efficacy of \"Nearer My God to Thee,\" as a song for sinking\nships,--we forgot at first in our own pain that this was merely the\nbody of the Old strained to a cracking point by the resistless growth\nof the New.\n\nPresently we grew kinder.... In a way, the Old was the grim stepmother\nin whose house we learned how _not_ to do most things; in whose kitchen\nwe learned cleanliness, because of the vile example of her organic\nsloth; in whose walled garden we learned the peril and the passion of\nQuest, because we loathed her long snoring of afternoons; from the\ndeath of whose sects and schism-shops we set forth to find the unity of\nlife; from the obscenity of whose loves we came into the first great\ncleansing hatred of ourselves....\n\nNo hatred now. Hatred is part of the Old. It has no part to unsteady\nthe hands of the reconstructionists. This New Race has come up in\nstrong soil. The Old nourished and fertilised all its vitalities. The\nnew green beneath the litter of dead leaves cries out under the decay,\n\"You are stifling me!\" but the plan of it all is wiser, for there is\nwarmth still in the humus of the old to protect the new and the frosts\nmay not be finished.\n\nMore and more as the sense of big cleansing and chastening came home\nto us, the everlasting principles of reason and order and beauty also\nappeared out of the chaos and the pain.... They were saying in Europe\nthat this war was a war without morale. We believed it would be a war\nwith morale before the destruction was finished. One of the cleanest\ndreams we had was that America would bring, with its guns and knives\nand instruments of flagellation, something of the almighty spirit of\nthe human heart to light the blackness where the Pale Horse has passed.\nThat's all morale is, and war without morale hasn't any cause or effect\non the constructive side, and will continue to destroy itself against\nitself as all such forces do in their madness.\n\nIf any one concludes that we were a group of religionists gathered in\nStonestudy that night it will be well to point out that this planet\nwill be a whole lot more religious before war ends, and no one will be\nlouder about it than the trade-mind everywhere.\n\nWar brings death, and death enforces the faith of the human heart,\nand faith is one of a trinity (as we learned in Sabbath School and\nvariously since) that inclines the heart of man to God. You take a\nloved object from the Seen and place it in the Unseen (thousands each\nday the soldiers pass) and faith is born of the agony of separation.\nThe human heart forces a bridge across the abyss from the Seen to the\nUnseen. It's the old story of the bereaved turning to God. Saints are\nthus made--thus tenderness and purity come to be.\n\nWithin the next ten years there will be heroisms before our\neyes--heroisms such as seers and saints and sages have dreamed of as\nthe consummation of the human heart. And those who have lost most and\nmourned most will read the eternal joy of the Plan from the Book of\nGod's Remembrance.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen you see the remnant of a race of people crying out that there\nis no God--then you begin to know what war means. When a country has\ngiven its tithe of human blood, _or one in five is gone_--then you\nbegin to know what an Austrian woman meant, when she spoke of the\n\"horrible grinding of war and the answer of the women to man's cries\nof pain afield.\" ... When peace brings a worship of materials and a\ndulness that cannot look beyond existing institutions--the end is war,\nand after that a sitting in black upon the ground.\n\nWe didn't know what death meant before this war--but many have learned.\nThe very word death has the sweetest sound of all uttered names to many\na lonely heart to-day. We didn't know enough about death. We had the\nhabit of thinking this was all. The end of such thinking is war, and\nafter that, a sitting in black upon the ground.\n\nWhen your heart is cleft in twain and one part stays on this side, and\nthe other over the dim borderland--there's a straining of eyes into the\nUnseen, a picture making out of the creative materials of human spirit.\nLife of the soul begins again--out of pain--always out of pain.\n\nWe have not yet learned to accept life from the higher masters, Joy and\nBeauty. We still learn through Pain. We forget the meaning of death,\neven as we gather our things of death about us, and war comes along to\nremind us again. Always those who answer to Master Pain must look to\ndeath to find their relation to God. The faith that comes with peace\nat last to the human heart, is energised by a love that crosses the\nabyss of life and death.... A grand old teacher, Master Pain. When we\nknow all his lessons, and take his hand from our shoulder, and touch it\nto our lips (for we shall know well his wonderful work when the time\ncomes for us to part with him), then we shall find that he is not a\nblack man at all--but a Sunburnt God....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFour at a supper table--a little child, its young mother, and the old\nfather and mother of a grown son, who has just died for France. The old\nman's eyes roved from the child to its mother, back to the old woman,\nand lingered there, something rough and deep and wise in his look. The\nchild suffered vaguely. There was much suffering in the house.... The\nyoung mother asked coldly if they could feel _him_ in the room. Then\njust as coldly she asked if there were a God. Then she ran from the\nroom with a cry like a night animal. The silent child began to weep.\nThe old man and the old woman stared at each other and wondered what\ntheir daughter-in-law meant about _him_ being in the room.\n\nA picture of the chastened world.\n\nThe child turned from the strange, sad human beings to the fairies\nthat played upon the peasant hearth. The child's mother had rushed\nforth into the twilight to find a vision or a memory or a breath of\nGod. The old man and the old woman looked so long at each other in the\ndarkness--that the soul of the son of their flesh stood for one healing\ninstant between them. Thus the enduring figures of the Unseen reveal\nthemselves to those who have suffered to the end.\n\nThe nations are but names to fight for. These battle-lines are for\nhumanity's soul. If America is fighting for humanity, let it be with\nsurgical calm and healing in her hands. Hate spoils everything.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe babe knows a room; the child knows a house and looks out into a\nstreet; the youth learns the street and then the city; the young man\nlearns his country, but the man should learn the world. You can never\nbe the great lover of America by hating the rest of the world; no\nhuman mind can see what is best, what is even good for America, when\nthe interests of other countries are forgotten. No man's country ever\nsuffered because he turned his love and service to the feet of humanity.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe few who brought the real American impartiality to the European\nwar in the first months, found themselves in the midst of the most\nchallenging chaos that ever reared its head to the light. Profound and\ntragic impressions followed each other. It became icy clear that the\ngreater nations, as well as the pawns of the Balkans and the Levant,\nwere puppets alike, churned together in a great planetary cleansing.\nEvery partisan path was found to be increasingly crooked the farther\none advanced--and a sheer descent at the last. Any national point of\nview used to dupe the people into greater destructive energy, proved\nin itself, no matter how sincerely offered, as short-sighted and\nill-founded as the hatred of two soldiers who meet between trenches and\ndiscover, as they gore each other to death, that their only basis for\nhostility is a different colour of coat.\n\nStudying Europe in those dark days, the unprejudiced eye was in danger\nof having some truths torn down with the host of illusions. It was\nhard to hold fast to the fact that there was anything magic or holy\nabout nations at war. Indeed, they seemed entities formed of groups of\ngreedy men who wanted their way--in the main, groups of leaders devoid\nof vision and the spirit of fraternity, and careless of the welfare of\nthe people, quite the same as many great commercial organisations....\nThe real enemies of any people are groups of men who want things for\nthemselves. The real issue of the war has nothing to do with entities\nof this kind, nor with alliances of such entities, but with the painful\ngroping consciousness of the peasant mind--its slow and torturous\nawakening to the fact that royalty in its utmost pomp and glow does not\nenfold God.\n\nThe people must learn before they can be free. Hitherto they have\nbeen duped by the nations; and the nations are now being duped by each\nother; but there is a greater plan at work--using men and nations\nalike,--a plan to do away with boundaries and hatred and preying,\nto strike the spear from the hand of man and leave it free to help\nhis neighbour, to establish democracy in the place of imperialism,\nand fraternity upon the solid footings of the earth in the place of\nseparateness and strife.... The new volume of human spirit already\nhas been opened. We felt it that night in Stonestudy before lights\nout,--the first beauty as of a song across still waters.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAn American correspondent going home from the field in Europe \"the\nlong way around,\" met an old Persian Master on the road to Damascus.\nWith the sage was his nearest disciple, also a Persian; in fact, the\nyoung man was so loved that he had been changed from discipleship into\nsonship. This young Persian became very devoted to the American. They\nstood together for a moment in silence, when the time for parting came.\nThe old Master drew near and said:\n\n\"It is good to see you place your hands together. To me it is a symbol\nof the marriage of the East and West, for the East and West must mate.\nLong ago the East went up to God and the West went down to men. The\nEast has learned Vision and the West has learned Action. These two\nmust meet and mate again for the glory of God and the splendour of\nearth. The East has lifted its soul to the hills and held fast to\nits memory of the Father's house. The West has descended into the\nfolds of the valley, and won from agony and isolation its efficacy in\nmaterial things. And now the mystic is looking down and the materialist\nis looking up. Soon their hands shall join--like your two hands in\nmine--and there shall be great joy in the Father's House.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n9\n\nSTEVE\n\n\nSteve and I were camping together for a few weeks on the Southern\nCalifornia strand. One morning he looked up from the pages of a book in\nhis hands and remarked:\n\n\"This fellow is one of us.\"\n\nThe book was _Youth_, by Joseph Conrad.\n\n\"I haven't read a book for a long time,\" Steve added. \"There are three\nstories in this. I've read only one--_Heart of Darkness_--in fact, I\nhaven't finished that.... You have to fall into this Conrad and be\nhis--to get him. You let your mind open into a cup, and presently after\nsix or seven pages, you find it brimming. If you fall into him deep\nenough, you get almost what he sees--not quite though. No reader ever\ndoes. But you get something intense, fascinating, a restlessness, a\nterror. You find that all your somnolence and inertia has caught fire.\"\n\nThere had been a ten minutes' rain at dawn. The smell of the tropics\nmoved over the sterile sand. It was cool, but there was no wind. The\nday promised heat. We had been up in Canada for the winter, and it was\nhard to believe that hot sunlight was free. A broad quilt of gulls and\nplover sat together on the shore waiting for the drying light or for\nthe mist to rise, or the tide to ebb....\n\nSteve resumed:\n\n\"He tells about a boy who loved maps--who used to look for hours at the\ncontinents--thrillingly attracted to the darkest places, the patches\nstill unprotected. There was one heart of darkness with a river winding\nthrough. He doesn't tell you the continent or the river, but there were\nelephants there. He should have called the story _Ivory_.... Years\nafterward, the man, worn to the bone from the world's lies, sets out to\npenetrate this deepest black of the planet. He reaches the river and\nfollows it for endless days, but the world has arrived. Some nation is\nthere colonising for Ivory--you don't know which. The story is told\nlike that--unplaced in time and space. Really it doesn't matter what\nparticular imperialistic tendency is at work. The fact is, he climbed\nthe river into the ghastliest chaos....\n\n\"You get the deep green of the heart of the continent, the mournful\nbrooding leafiness--the natives herded and distracted, more afraid of\nthe blast of a river-steamer's whistle than of any kind of violent\ndeath. Death was familiar to them. They were chained to labour,\ncast loose to die. Vultures swept the sky waiting for their limbs\nto fall still. There was the salty pester of fever in the air--men\nfoolish with fever and heat--a haze of flies--white men burning out\ninside--oxidisation of human souls--a steady and hideous beat of\ndeath--devils of hate and violence and acquisitiveness--clerks making\nentries of Ivory--a nation's young men running through the jungles\nfor Ivory--carloads of bright glass beads and painted calico for\nIvory--all standards of life and career-building set upon Ivory--murder\nfor that--lives lost, tribes shattered--the leafy heart of a fresh\ncontinent seared with the civil flame of greed--commodities dumped\nin river beds--mails that men would die for torn open by vandal\nhands--waste, perversity, nothing clean-cut even of crime, the horrible\nnon-initiative of the middlemen.... All this told with patient\nexactitude, but with indescribable intensity; told by a master-hand\nthat trembles; with the control that one can only know who is sensitive\nenough to tremble. You feel a big man bending forward to make you see\nsomething that all but killed him to find out. You feel him scarred\nand sick, his heart leaking, because he found it all so hideously and\nstupidly rotten. It's a little picture of a trade war--that's the\npoint--the war of middlemen--middlemen turning to rend each other....\nHeart of darkness--after that the light comes.\"\n\nSteve opened and shut his fingers in the sunlight. The warmth was\nsweeter every minute.\n\n\"This fellow sees it all,\" he went on. \"He's done a big job for me--for\nanybody who gives himself to the book. There's something immortal about\nbeing a workman like that--about any workman. That's why one wants to\ncast a weep after the passing hordes of middlemen. They can't do work.\nThey don't even see the fog of human agony they've painted the world\nwith. They are _it_. It is the old against the old. It's all about\nIvory. They crucify for fossil.\"\n\nSteve was lighting up.\n\n\"This Conrad brought back to me to-day a bigger love for the workman.\nThe starved and scorned inventor gets the best of it, after all--not\nin Ivory--but he builds something in himself. He quickens something in\nhimself that goes on in freed consciousness when the body falls. No, I\ndon't insist that anything goes on in any particular way, but the deep\nmoments of work somehow show a man that the best of him here is but a\nnexus between a savage past and a splendid future.... It's wonderful to\nbe alive to-day. I believe there are secret agencies at work behind all\nthe governments--that they are one at the top. I don't mean detectives,\nnot intelligence or espionage bureaus. Potent, mystic, infallible\nforces. It doesn't matter. _Some person or some group is holding the\nplan of the New Age._\n\n\"We're learning life as never before--plucking the deeper fruits and\nmysteries of pain. But one must go apart from the crowd to see. One\nmust cease to be a partisan. The real seer sees the whole, not the\npart. All the war-lands are in pain. One sees only the part, when one\nis in pain. Not one man out of a million sees it all. A few Russians\nsee it all--a few in China--a few in India. Romain Rolland sees it all.\nThis fellow, Conrad, sees it all.... It's a pity if America doesn't\nsoon get the full picture. It's worth seeing----\"\n\nOcean and sunlight and mountains. The world was a brimming cup. If a\nman could take all the beauty there was for him, he could never die....\nWe went over to the post-office of the little town. The business men of\nthe place were coming in. The first mail had just been distributed....\nGrocers, butchers, the hardware man, the real estate men, the man\nwho ran the newspaper, fishermen, barbers, lawyers--mainly fat and\npleasant--children on the way to school.\n\nThey were short-breathed and short-armed. They dressed in wool and wore\nheavy dark hats. I had never noticed before how short-armed the race\nof tradespeople are. Labourers and peasants are not so; painters and\nmusicians have a tendency to be long-armed. I mentioned this to Steve.\n\n\"The middlemen,\" said he. \"They are tightened throughout--ligaments\ncontracted--contraction taking place in the deeper weaves of\nmind, a drying up of the deeper sources of life. Contraction,\nself-centering--that's what madness is. A man must sing, or weave, or\nbuild or make bricks. The ways of competitive life are paltry ways.\nThey hide their ways from one another, and afterward from themselves.\nThey pluck no fruits; they contrive no short cuts; they do not become\nintimate even with the commodities of the earth--the very things\nthey worship and pare margins from. They eat infamously, filch from\neach other.... It's all here--all that Conrad pictured in the heart\nof darkness. These are the sick, the maimed, the blind of the earth.\nThey live in the realm of fear, pain, anger, desire. These are the\nwar-makers.... Their arms are twisting and shortening in to their\nnavels----\"\n\nSunlight streamed in through the open doors of the post-office. Motors\ngoing by drowned the soft rustling from the sea. The hell of the\nouter world trickled in through bits of conversation. Everybody had\nread the morning paper at the same time. No one thought of telling\nanything that his neighbour did not know.... Europe was starving--the\nPresident was ill--railroads in strike, coal famine, prohibitive cost\nof staples--France cracking with the dry-rot of exhaustion--England ...\na voice--Germany choking in her own blood.\n\nThe tradespeople of the little town by the sea gathered in their bills\nand orders and advertisements and hurried back to their shops. Nothing\nastonished any more. There were no words for the world's woe--no ears\nfor lamentations--no mind but to buy cheap at the right time and sell\ndear all the time. We walked back to the shore.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"I once saw a little town on a hill-side,\" Steve said. \"A grand\nboot-maker was there, and a man who made clocks with such tools as he\nhad--big noble clocks that ran unvaryingly eight full days. Another\nman made furniture--perfect woods from the forest drying in his kilns\nand sheds. There was a sweet smell about his shop. There was a weaver\nand a potter there. The days were long and singing, full of labour and\npeace. No one multiplied by mechanical means. Every artisan had his\napprentices. The age of the apprentices will come back--with a new\ndimension added----\"\n\n\"Switzerland or dream?\" said I.\n\nSteve smiled. \"They are starting communities all along this coast,\" he\nsaid. \"Many are on the quest of the town I saw.\"\n\nWe sat down upon the sand again. The sun was higher. White clouds\nbrooded in heaven's own daylight; white wings moved upon the sea, I\nwas thinking about Steve and all he had said. What Conrad pictured in\nthe dark continent existed here in one of the cleanest small towns\nof America--an earlier stage of the same malignant disease. From the\nbroad and beautiful vantage points of democracy and fraternity--every\nshop here was a lair, the products, exposed and secreted, a spectacle\nof moral decay and insensate devouring; every schoolhouse a place of\ndismal enchantment where competition was not only taught but enforced.\nSteve knew deeply well when he spoke, that the creative artist, the\nproducer of every real and true and beautiful thing, comes into the\npower to express himself, in spite of such education, not because of\nthem.\n\nOne can laugh at all mediocre men occupying seats of the mighty and\ncalling their dead gods to witness that they are right--but one\nwho knows that the intrinsic gift of each child is the one thing\nin sunlight to be promoted, turns away a bit dismally from the\nspectacle of the standardisation of the child mind--from the wholesale\nmanufacture of middlemen by school system.\n\nSteve loves America. I know of no one who loves America more. He\ndoesn't rise and cheer when the orchestra plays a questionable bit\nof verse and tune in a movie-hall where imagination is being put to\ndeath--_but he believes in the vision of the Founders of America_. He\nbelieves in the spaciousness and splendour of the American spirit; that\nthe dream of a few mystics will triumph at the last, and that the many\nwill follow the dream of the few. He does not believe that the voice of\nthe middlemen is the voice of God.\n\nIt's hard to credit, but this young man does not hate one country to\nlove another. He loves America because the dream of a new heaven and a\nnew earth has a quicker chance for breaking through into matter here\nthan elsewhere. He perceives the tissues of the senile and the obscene\nbreaking down in America, under intense civil and martial and moral\nprocesses. He believes that this breaking down is essential before the\nbuilding begins. He believes that the future will be built upon the\nthoughts of men who are great enough to stand apart from the dumas,\nfrom the cabinets and the senates, just now. As Steve sees it, all\npartisans have to do with the parts, and the parts of the partisans\nhave to do with the Old, which is destroying itself--sense against\nsubstance, limb against limb, organ against organ.\n\nThe young men of the New Race are born of a mating of the East and\nWest. They are naturally intolerant of partitions. Steve is one of\nthese. He isn't a spirit alone. He is a body and brain. He has stayed\nawake through the full night and day. He sees the planet in one piece.\nHe has crossed all the rivers. He knows the young men of America. He\nis one of them. He loves America because he knows the rest of the\nworld. He has friends among the Chinese young men--among the young\nmen of Russia and India. He says that all three have greater obstacles\nto overcome in getting the dream through, than we of America--that\neverybody will be singing it after the wreckage is cleared away.\n\n\"America, Russia, India, China--they are lands, not pavements,\" Steve\ndeclared.\n\nHe was looking across and to the south. The sun was a glory about\nus--all the background a tentative, swiftly passing thing, all but\nforgotten now, stilled by the rustle of the long, low white lines of\nthe sea.\n\n\"The New Age will redeem all the broad lands,\" he said, with a trace of\na smile--\"lands for meadows and fields and gardens--meadows for milk,\nfields for wheat, gardens for honey--the New Race is particular for the\nperfect foods--foods for the giant and the child--broad lands for the\ntoilers--the great sea coasts for the dreamers.... It's all a matter of\ntaste,\" he added.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n10\n\nHEJIRA\n\n\nWe found we were a bit tied in the Middle West, caught somewhat whether\nwe liked it or not, in the meshes of possession. Steve and I had liked\nit much out on the Southern California strand.... When one reads in the\nearlier book,[12] the stress that we put on building that big stone\nhouse on Lake Erie; this felicitous hejira may disconcert.\n\n    [12] _Child and Country._\n\nThe fact is, we wearied of possession. We found ourselves yearning\nfor that beauty which is unconfined. We were athirst for new things,\na different break of seasons and taxes.... The world was so full of\npeople who could build and buy and own and insure, that we decided we\nshould be doing the things that the others could not. We were glad to\nhave built the house for the other fellow. We had to do it. We learned\nhow to run it well, in and out--but it was a stone house. When a man\nbuilds a stone house with walls eighteen inches thick, he must leave a\nhole to get out; also he must be sure that he isn't building on his own\nchest.... In true Hive spirit, we renounced at the highest moment of\npossession.\n\nThe crowd cannot be seen by one who stands in the crowd. On the same\nbasis a man cannot see the relation of his house to the road or garden\nfrom the inside of the house. The world must be regarded from outside\nto be seen as a whole. The New Race is determined to see it so. This\n_outside_ is none other than the mystical viewpoint of all world\nartists and builders.\n\nOne does not know what friends are, until one discovers that the secret\nof friendship is not in getting but in giving. No one knows what love\nis until he reverses all the laws that the many follow now. I do not\nmean lawlessness. I mean the higher law that is found at last by the\nquester after goodness, beauty and truth. We have to finish with the\nworld as it is before we set out in quest of a better country.... We\nfound that we had to become active servants of a finer ideal than\nhouseholding at its highest. We determined to do more than to dream\nthis ideal; we set about to make a better country. At worst, we work\nfor our children.\n\nIt came to us many times before we moved that we were forever\ndone with things as they are; that we had come to the end of show\nand property-measure and hoarding; to the end of the love of self\nwhich destroys the vision for friendship; to the end of domesticity\nwhich holds one's neighbour as prey or rival; to the end of civic\nidentification, or relation with any federated commonwealth, which\nfancies its existence threatened by the prosperity of other political\nbodies. No heat about it.\n\nWe came to the edge of the Lake in vanloads; we went away with bags....\nI turned from the eastern distance on the bluff, on one of the last\ndays, and looked at the vined study and the big stone house, the elms\nso strong and green about it. I remembered the early picture of all\nthis. It began from Stevenson's _Treasure of Franchard_, many years\nago,--how old Dr. Duprez went out in the morning and tried grapes and\nplums with the dew on them, sniffing the perfumes of his own yard,\ndwelling in his own orchards.\n\nI remember one day before building that the man came to us about the\nyoung trees. He had pictures of them in books--blooms and fruits of\nsuch colours that nature would never be guilty of--all the fruits I\nheard of as a boy--white grapes that never grow in this country, purple\nones that grow whether you care or not....\n\nThe trees were coming on now, many with ripening fruit. The grove of\nelms was a matter of collateral, as the bank would say. The break-water\nhad caught up thousands of yards of sand. It worked--the old struggle\nof wasting banks forgotten until a greater storm. The honeysuckles that\nwere planned to climb the bars of the study windows, had to be trimmed\nnow for any light at all. The wistaria trailed admirably and imposed\nupon the front the sense of years.\n\n... We had planned to have all the fruits; some of the finest were now\nin flower. We came with many clothes, underwear and outerwear, wool and\ndark things. We left with a few light effects in our hands--to find a\nplace where white garments might be worn in peace. We came with a great\nidea of food--game and fishes, meats, poultry, many cans and vegetables\nand desserts. We went away with a taste for graham bread and butter--a\nspread of honey, a glass of milk. We came with a fear of disease for\nthe children, fear of colds, fear of losing something, or having\nsomething taken away, doubtless having the fear of death and accident.\nWe went away with a clear idea of what death is and the advantage of\nit, children and adults alike.\n\nYoung children rode the horse that had a reputation for being\nwild-spirited and very much a man's mount. We had seen the deep places\nof the Lake fill with sunshine. We came with parasols and awnings and\nprotections against the sun. Most of us would like to have worn nothing\nbut a breech-clout had the town permitted; and the only time we had\nfound the world hard to bear, was the long grey Spring days of rain.\n\nSunlight--it is closer to God and happiness and manhood and every\ndelight than words can suggest. The more you know of it, the more you\nneed; the more you love it, the more its mysterious excellence unfolds.\nI know what sunstroke is, and what the sickness from heat is. It's a\nvile state of the body, or vile clothing that stifles the body. When\none is well and has learned to come back to the Father of Lights--there\nis no fear in his heart. I used to wear a helmet and dark glasses, but\nno more--eyes stronger than ever. I look for the sun in the morning and\nstare up from the sand into his face at high noon. There is nothing the\nmatter with sunlight. The sadness and the sickness is with those who\nbring their quilts and cloaks to hide it from their flesh....\n\nIt's all in synthesis. The end of bulk possession is pain.... We\nstarted in with many flowers. We ended with roses. It's all in the\ntea-rose.... By careful selection of thoughts over a little period, we\ncan come into the joy of flowers in other people's gardens. There are\nbrave men who allow you to walk in their orchards; and there are many\nwho work hard to raise fruits for a price. There is much joy, if you\nreally look at it, in building a house for another fellow.\n\nWe start with the brute materials--beginning with the clay itself.\nOur cultivations become more intensive through the years. All life is\nso. We take the extract of a thing at last--a shelf of books where\nformerly we wanted a roomful--somebody's else little rented bungalow,\nwhere formerly we wanted an estate. We realise, at last, that there is\nan essence to be obtained from the extract, an oil from the essence--a\nspirit at last from the oil. The whole story is in that--synthesis.\nSlowly, at last, we begin to set ourselves free. We descend into\nmatter; learn its lessons and laws, rise like a plant through the\ndarkness to the light, integrating force to meet and cope with the new\nand lighter element. I held up seven little books in one hand--weighing\nno more than a new novel.\n\n\"It's all in these,\" I said to the Chapel. \"One could put these in his\nbag and have it all.\"\n\n... And then at last, I went down alone and empty-handed to the shore,\nmeditated on God with sun and sand and flowing airs.... All matter\nis scaffolding which falls away. A man thinks he builds a house for\nhimself, but no sooner has he put on the last tile than death or the\nopen road calls. He chooses his climate and grows out of it. He thinks\nhe must possess, that he must hoard against a rainy day, and he gathers\nthe stuff of death about him. If he cannot rise, death covers him\nfor the time. Dr. Duprez didn't speak of the care of his orchard, or\nhis garden. It was all _story_ to me. Dear R.L.S. He didn't dream\nof the work of the hand necessary to keep up an orchard, and have a\nconnoisseur's joy for a few summer days of the year. He didn't tell\nof the parasites, the sprinklings, the arsenates and pumps, nor of\nthe little winged migrators that sit on the hills, waiting for the\npotatoes to come up. The call comes to possess nothing. It had better\nbe answered.\n\n\n\n\n11\n\nTHE SPECTATOR\n\n\nSome of us here have swiftly reviewed certain old slaveries, that we\nmay set free the children of to-day.... They do not have to make the\nsame mistakes we did. I, at thirty-nine, say to those ten and twenty\nand thirty years younger:\n\n\"Start where I leave off. I do not relieve you of pain or error or\nshortsightedness, of passion or pleasure, or anything that arouses\nor wears down body and soul. Only this I ask you--don't make the\nsame mistakes I did. Let me give you the answer to a few petty and\npestiferous lures. I can put you right on them. Begin now to learn\nyour lessons by doing things wrong at first, a holy way to get\nsomewhere, but be a pioneer in your evils; be daring and fastidious\nand full-powered and discriminating in your faults! Above all, be\nimpersonal in them as soon as possible. Let the winds of the world\nbreeze through. It's all a Laugh.\"\n\nEvery process of the world to-day is designed to take away that\nadorable love and listening of the child to its own soul. Streets,\nschools, trade, neighbours, houses in rows, priests, pastors,\ncharlatans, all standardise. A thousand teachers in technic for one\nin the spirit of things; ten thousand teachers of the health of the\nbody (and every one wrong) for one who shows the way to the single and\nsacred fountain of youth; innumerable voices lifted in fly-dronings\nof instruction, how to fill the bin and the brain, the bank and the\nbourse--how to have and to hold and to die holding, and to bury oneself\nin the midst of--for one who laughs and plays and dares to watch the\nworld go by.... At last to be the Spectator!\n\nI tell you now from much living that there is nothing here in the world\nthat is worth fighting for, but the glad tolerance of events, sheer,\nlaughing joy in the Plan.... Every time you adjust your life to the\nstandard of the world, you are doing something that is beneath your\nsoul, and you will suffer for it, and be forced to retrace. Dress for\nthe world, and the world will find its flaws in you. Work for the world\naccording to its specification, and it will defile you. Enter into any\nof the competitions of the world and your face and your hands and task\nwill be constricted by visible and invisible impediments and barriers,\nless than the real of you in every detail. Search for health according\nto the laws of flesh alone, and it will elude you at every point,\nshowing you all vanities and pits and pains. Search for beauty of face\nand body, and it will be the first thing taken. There is nothing in the\nworld but to make the human divine--that is the job we are here for.\n\nTo cease to hold is the beginning of invincible attraction; want\nnothing and the treasures of the world are yours. You cannot have\nhealth until you are ready to give up life here. Cease to cling,\nand that which was a body held apart from you, is suddenly a winged\ncreature returning.... There is nothing here but the love story, and\nthe power of that must be spiritual. The madonna of the future will\nlook up, not down at the head upon her breast. Man must overcome\nmammon; Woman must overcome the mammal. The lovers of the future will\nlook a little time in each other's eyes and much above to a Third who\nwill come nearer and nearer for their adoration.... The friends of the\nfuture will sing in their Partings; they shall know the spirit and the\nbreath of _camaraderie_ which knows no death.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is a tendency on the part of our young associates to be\nextravagant in their speech. Much that they see is beyond their\ncapacity decently to express. A group of us was looking down from a\nhigh balustrade. Flowery vines were woven intricately against the face\nof the stucco below. We became conscious of an incredible whirring, so\nlow that it was difficult to hear, and yet so intense as to give the\nthought of a distant seismic disorder. It was the invisible wings of a\nhumming-bird, flashing from cup to cup in the vines below. The child\nstanding next to me said:\n\n\"The sound has texture.\"\n\nIt expressed something very real to me; yet there is not power in words\nto portray the exact feeling. All the objects of nature have their\nspiritual dimensions also for those who dwell much in the Unseen. These\nunusual children see the material object merely as an outpost for a\nchallenging mystery; while, to the material mind, the outpost is all,\nand the lavish adjectives and expressions of the former are deplored as\ngush or affectation. As a matter of splendid truth, the most marked and\npotent of all adjectives and expressions are pitifully inadequate to\nexpress the lustre and radiance which begins at the point where three\ndimensions end.\n\nThe Valley Road Girl came into the Study one day, saying that this\nchapel book should be called _The Hive_. We all thought it a wonderful\nname to work toward, yet the unfolding of possibilities has been\nsteadily interesting since that day.\n\nThe inner sanctuaries of occult literature commend the students to look\nto the bees. The pattern of much that man has still to unfold from his\nown soul, for his personal and communal uplift, is already expressed\nin the hive. There is a period of larva, and a period of wings to each\ncycle. Such matters call to those of spiritual discernment. One feels\non the verge of great revelations for humanity, beyond the thing called\ndeath, as he studies this miniature model of a great democracy.\n\nThe most fascinating love episode I ever read was the Nuptial Flight in\nMaeterlinck's _Life of the Bee_. The majesty of winging to the sun, the\nfalling back of the weaker-winged suitors, the commanding isolation of\nsun and sky, fusion under the mighty beat of the wings of the queen,\nthe broken body of the male, the mother's return to the shadow and the\nlabour of the generative wheel--magically, it all opened a vista to\nthe great renunciations, the great passions and aspirations ahead for\nthe human soul, great fusions of the future, marriages truly made in\nheaven, the inevitable trinity of all matings--the drama of love and\ndeath.\n\nFor her one high noon flight in June, the queen toils through years.\nShe brings back from that superb instant the swarming cities of the\nfuture. On and on, she unfolds her fecundity in the dark, a prodigious\nand Herculean labour; from the human standpoint a task of intolerable\npain and monotony. The queen's labour is scarcely more difficult than\nthe tasks assigned to the hosts of workers, which appear to be denied\nany separate episode of emancipation. Yet, equally with the queen,\nthey share the communal spirit; and no one who has stood among the\nhives at the end of a long summer day, and heard the song of bounty and\ndeep-hearted content, can deny the peace that dwells among the myriad\nof skilled artisans, each with his perfectly appointed task.\n\nBees appear to remember the light, while working at the opposite side\nof the wheel. Men, as yet, are detached, lost in the heresies of self\nand strife. Only a few visionaries have peered beyond the petty reach\nof the optic nerve, to perceive that this, which we make so much of, is\nbut the hell-portion; that this appearance of ours in pounds is a mere\ndressing up in materials of earth to endure the dark and low vibration\nof the wheel's most downward sweep. These few visionaries, always\nsinging the joy of the other arcs of the cycle, somehow keep the dream\nalive,--the dream that appears already to be the essential blessedness\nand magic of life in the hive.\n\nAll mysticism seeks to teach us this single point which the bees seem\nto have learned so well--to transcend time and space in labour; to put\noff the sense of separation and strife, to hearken to the soul's own\nsong of equality and sufficing days. We must be pushed to the last\nreaches of pain before we learn this secret. We have to penetrate the\ndarkness before we earn this flash which swings wide the portals of joy.\n\nJoy is the most potent thing in the universe. The bee-queen mother\nweaves race after race of progeny out of the incredible dynamics of an\ninstant's joy. Each cell that she fills with life is a living fragment\nof her nuptial feast. Fusion is ecstasy, parturition is pain. The many\nbecome one; that is heaven. The one becomes many again; that is earth\nand hell. Integration and diffusion--the same story told in the hives\nand ant-hills, in the strolling winds and swinging seas, in the hearts\nand marts of men, in matings everywhere.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe original idea was to use the title, _The Hive_, in relation to the\nhappy intensity of Stonestudy days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the\nname, because of its revelations in regard to the new social order; the\npure and instant abnegation of the self to the community; the active\nacceptance of the precept: _That which is good for the one is good for\nthe many, and that which is good for the many is good for the one_.\n\nWe cannot lose ourselves long in our own misery when we realise the\nglory of yesterday, and the more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow.\nWe cannot continue to feel our own isolation when we perceive a brother\nin the eye of a stranger, when we perceive the sons of God in the\neyes of passing men. At length appears the task ahead--the great\nFatherland, the Planetary Hive.\n\nI have taken the hint from the new race children, that to transcend\npain we must make joy of it. Given the hint, one realises that the\nmasters of all ages have told the same story--how to make light of\nhuman shadow, how to make lustrous our own darkness. No matter what\nscience says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute means the same\nthing; this is the marriage at Cana, the turning of water into wine;\nthis is the passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute base metals\ninto gold; this is healing; this is regeneration.\n\nTo make joy out of pain is still more: it is power for world's work;\nit is the light that one carries among men; it is the fire that makes\nman remembered by his fellows, that makes man significant in any\ntask. It is loss of the sense of self; the death of the lower for the\nbirth of the higher life; the subjugation of three-score-and-ten for\nimmortality; an _adios_ to the hands that cling, for the stride and\nrhythm of the Great Companions on the long road. It is not for the\nsaint any more than for the soldier, not for the sage any more than\nfor the politician, not for the poet any more than for the parent. It\nis not piety, it is power. One learns it best from the children. One\nbecomes as a little child in learning it well.\n\nWe are learning rapidly these days. These are the days of humanity's\npassion and pilgrimage. The soul of humanity is passing along the dusty\nroads of Palestine, for the healing of its own weaknesses, the casting\nout of its own demons. One who is not carrying a part of the world\nburdens now, as well as his personal pack, seems forgotten of the gods.\nIt has come to many of us that we dare not take more than a glimpse of\nour own allotted happiness--that we may not have more than a touch of\nthe beloved's hand in these days of parturition everywhere.\n\nBut personally and nationally we shall come to that significant\ncrossing where nothing else can be taken from us, where death seems the\nhighest boon, and Master Pain has driven home his most pointed shaft.\n\nThat is the moment of laughter. Driven to the last ditch we turn and\nlaugh. That is the moment of our expansion for a new kind of heroism.\nOne builds from that deep hour.\n\nThe ultimate secret is not to identify oneself with that which changes.\nWhen these objects shift or break down, or some one takes them away, we\nsuffer the old savage rent. The day comes when we disentangle from the\nfinal mesh of possession--cease the idolatry of things; then, and only\nthen, are we rich--possessing the spirit and essence of all things,\ntallying the universe within according to its objective arrangements\nwith the universe without.\n\nFinally, to master the world, one must learn actually to enjoy the\nmutation of material things, as one of an audience watches the\nmovements on the stage. No longer torn here and there in the small\nfury of detached affairs, one laughs richly at the progress of the\nPlay. Possessing the spirit of all things within, he realises that\nnothing he has can really be taken away. No longer identifying himself\nwith material objects, he is at last in touch with the perfect and\nchangeless archetypes. This dispassion, so difficult to reach, at last\nextends over all world-forms. One ceases to love bodies; one loves\nsouls. The son at the front, the daughter taken to a different house,\nthe empty seat at the table, crash of finance or romance--all but\na passing of symbols--Godspeed and a smile. Bit by bit the valiant\nreaches that profound and almost divine indifference to the external,\nhaving bound himself to the real, the enduring, the inner cosmos.\n\nFirst passion, then dispassion, then compassion--conquest of pairs of\nopposites until night and day are seen as separate sides of the same\nglobe. So with pain and pleasure and all fluctuations. Day by day,\nwhile learning this great secret, the aspirant is forced to die to\nthe thing he loves most. Day by day the thing that he hates and fears\nmost--for that he must live. At last, loves and hates merge together.\nOne is no longer focalised upon a point, but upon a universe. He\narrives at the great silence in himself, the static momentum. He no\nlonger moves with the world--the passing show goes by. He transmutes\npain into joy--not lying to the self, but because pain of the body is\njoy of the soul--joy of union, joy of birth that comes from pain.\n\nAt last to be the Spectator! To possess the world, to realise the\ndivinity of others, the ineffable equality of Souls. To have all,--the\nmothering winds of the hills and the holy breath of the sea; to move\nand laugh and die with all the world.\n\n\n\n\n12\n\nTOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL\n\n\nThe younger boy with us--Tom, now seven, does not find it easy to\nexpress himself through writing. He draws well, but that is a talent\nwhich I would not recognise so quickly as the expression through words.\nI mean to send him away to an artist for a time. Tom's imagination is\nfertile and expansive. He dictates well--wonderful play of colours\nthrough his mind. He talked the following to an amanuensis, a year or\nmore ago as he conned over a handful of coloured stones:\n\n\"There's a wonderful mystery about stones.... One like a mountain that\nthe fire comes up out of--with white on top ... another like a cap of\nhoney.... Another: this is like a great big mountain, and this is a\ndog full of food, and he's standing on a dragon, one of those devilish\ndragons; his tail is curved under him, and a spot on him near his neck.\nHe looks down and he sees the sky, floating. He wonders if he should\nleap down and get some. There's a great big lake under him. He thinks\nhe has more power than anything in the world--he's looking for more\npower. He's wondering where it is. See him thinking.\n\n... Here's a volcano at night--see the force, and then the rain beating\ndown behind it--even see fairies dashing by there. Here's a man with\nhis jaw knocked in. Mystery here--a forest at night. This is like a\ncoloured man that's been in a prize-fight, and he's gritting his teeth\nbecause he didn't win; he's got a mug-nose too. There's a fried-cake.\nAnother: Here's 'Agra Falls and fairies dashing, and sparkling stones\nat night. That's in Japan--that's true, look at all the lanterns up\nthere. There's some India--water dashing over a cliff, another like a\nsmooth cliff, nothing to hurt it, just fairies to fly around it--and a\ndoor-knob, and there's a hole where owls live....\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMany interesting things appear in these dictations provided Tom's\nhelper effaces himself sufficiently to permit the boy to forget\nexternals. The remaining pages of this chapter is a sketch of Tom's\ncase written by the Little Girl[13] who furnishes an interesting\nsurface of understanding for the complications of this lad.\nIncidentally her own development is one of the big winnings of\nStonestudy work. The Little Girl is now fourteen and this essay will\nshow something of her awakening:\n\n    [13] Jane Levington Comfort.\n\n\nTOM\n\nHe is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full of mysteries. Many\ntimes I have felt a strong spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover,\na dear and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom meant India to me.\nI could see the blue hills and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming\nhome through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers bringing food and\ntheir babies to the feet of a withered, white old man in a big Sannysin\nrobe. Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the master. I used\nto sit at his feet when he was very small, and listen carefully to his\nwandering, yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold many things to\nme about myself, and in that way helped me as a teacher would, though\nhe did not know.\n\nFor a while Tom's quest was in healing--his small hands were always\nlaid upon our hurts, serious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken\nthe past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to other things. When\nwe went to the country to live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom\nwas very much at home with the old Mother. He loved the living things\nthat most children fear; the bees and beetles, the blind little beings\nthat live in the earth and the small, red-tongued garter-snakes. He\noften spoke of a life he had lived with the snakes--of the big ones\nthat used to love him and curl around his neck. I never could help\nshuddering a little at the thought, but Tom would explain, \"They won't\nhurt you if you love them. Then they will love you too. Snakes feel\njust what you feel--if you're afraid of them, they get mad.\"\n\nAgain I would think of India--the great cobras that sit before a pure\nmaster, opening their hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what\npurity meant, a deep-down purity like the earth itself. Why should\nanything hurt him?... He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk\nthrough a cloud of double-winged beetles with utmost carelessness. Many\ntimes he has led me through a cloud of them, murmuring, \"They won't\nhurt you.\" Once he disturbed a honeybee in the late afternoon, drunken\nand senseless on the fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off\nhis hand and said in a disgusted voice, \"That wasn't my bee!\"\n\nA little later Tom discovered the Unseen of Nature. I mean that it\nceased to be the unseen to him. The fairies opened their mysterious\narms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost was he in their\nwonder. There was a small rock in the front yard that he used to sit\non when he was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes appeared to\nhim first--often rolling pebbles down the cliff, or gathering leaves\nin their little aprons. Then the tree-nymphs would come to him; so\ngreen and fresh and sweet--with bright eyes and coaxing hands. He\nwould follow laughingly what they said and did, always explaining to\nus later what they _meant_. And he saw the spirits of the water, far\nout over the lake, mingled with the sunlight. They gave him much, he\nsaid, but he would like to have gone out to them. He said that burning\nwood unlocked the fire fairies--let them out into freedom and light.\nHe loved to build fires on the beach, watching carefully the leaping\nand spreading of the flames. The salamanders were responsible for the\nspreading, he thought, and used to watch their little red hands at\nwork. His eyes seemed to melt as they stared so far and deeply into\nthings--way past the _seen_ into that which is nothingness to most of\nus. And he would come back slowly as though it were hard to detach\nhimself from the enchantment. Always we kept very still at such a time,\nfor fear we hurry him.\n\nOut of the magic and mystery of that summer, out of the warm nights\nfull of stars and peace, and the days of sunlight spent with the\nbeckoning fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. The fairies\nwere only the start of the Unseen, though we thought at the time that\nhe saw all that a human being could. At last the Master's voice reached\nhis open ears. He answered immediately.\n\nIt began with old Indian philosophy. He heard certain reading in the\nStudy one day, and later asked for the book. It was a little book,\nwritten in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, telling how to reach\nthe Feet of the Master. The next morning I found him on his knees\nbefore it in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just learning to read.\nIt was hard for him, but he wanted to be alone with the spirit of it.\nHe handed me the book saying, \"Please read this page aloud to me.\"\n\nThe young Master was speaking of Discrimination and Onepointedness.\nTom's face filled with the wonder of one who has found the thing he\nhas been wanting for a very long time--for ages perhaps. He said, \"If\nyou asked me to go and get you a book, and I went, but instead of\nbringing the book back to you, I took it to the shore and commenced\nto read, forgetting that you wanted it, that would be the opposite of\nonepointedness, wouldn't it?\" A little later, he said:\n\n\"The Master watches you from the hills, all the way up. He knows all\nthat you do. When you do small things, you are taking Him away from\nyourself; you are not being the _Soul_. Each time you do something\ngreat and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your\nsoul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain\nwhich way to go--tells you the path, the way home. _Then_ you have\nearned it. You have got to earn everything, everything that comes to\nyou.... I think that the Master comes and takes you away at night,\nshows you many things--tries to help you. But pain has to teach the\nbrain, and pain is the lack of soul. It hurts your soul to have you\nsuffer. It hurts the Master too, but they both know that you are\nlearning to be their comrade through your pain.\"\n\nTom paused. In his eyes there was that wonderful melting again, and a\njoy so deep and pure that it made my heart sing.\n\n\"It is all meant,\" he added. \"All is meant, but men do not know that\nthe Master is watching. For ages and ages the Master waits so patiently\nfor his _friend_ to come.\"\n\n\"His friend?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes. Souls are always comrades. The Master is greater than you are\nonly because he has been longer on the path. He started before you did.\nHe has come up through all that we have. Just think how long my Master\nhas been waiting for me, and I have not even found Him yet.\"\n\nI looked at the little body of him, at the innocence of the eyes and\nmouth, all untouched by the world--so pure and yet crying out in pain\nbecause he had taken so long on the quest.... His eighth year brought\nTom into regular boyhood. The young brain, always before silently\ngiving way to intuition, began to speak for itself. This stage is as\nimportant perhaps, but not so beautiful as when the hushedness and\nglowing of the Unseen touches a child. Here we turned from Tom, and the\nthings that creep into the heart of almost every boy of the same age,\ncrept into Tom's heart. He forgot the fairies--they ceased to call. He\nforgot the wide roads of peace and purity. He seemed to forget that the\nMaster was still waiting so patiently on the hill for him to open and\nreceive. But we knew better than that.\n\nThe development of the brain always robs a child of the inner glowing\nfor a time, but it all comes back again with a great dimension added;\nthe instrument is then keen and direct--a power in itself. We turned\nfrom Tom--a young brain standing alone, very conscious of itself,\nis anything but interesting. At the time we were in the turmoil of\ndeparture, each of us thinking in different ways about the long journey\njust ahead, and the wonder of being at last in California. Tom was more\nor less his own director those days.\n\nHe fell into crime, looted the house of a friend, denied everything. He\nwas sent to his quarters to stay until he found himself again. It took\na week exactly, but he found a deep happiness in being alone in the\nlittle room before he left it. It did him as much good as the long days\nin the sunlight ever could; he came out pale and wide eyed, and the\nbreath of a soul was in the room when he entered.\n\nOne day out of his long week, I went to him. The sun had gone down\nbehind a nest of grey clouds. Dusk had almost deepened into darkness,\nbut there was no light in his room. He sat there, his eyes staring\nahead of him, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I walked in quietly\nand sat down beside him. I was not even noticed; he was lost in his\nthought. At last I asked,\n\n\"Tom, what did you find so interesting in that cheap business?\"\n\n\"I haven't found out yet,\" he said grimly.\n\n\"Have you been thinking about it?\"\n\n\"Sure have. Been thinking all day.\"\n\n\"Has nothing come?\"\n\n\"No, but it's coming soon. It can't take long if I stay here like this,\nwishing and pulling every minute.\"\n\n\"Of course it can't.\"\n\nHe continued to stare into the darkness ahead.\n\n\"What does it feel like, Tom?\" I asked.\n\n\"Your soul leaves you.... Your soul won't stay if you are going back.\"\n\n\"Going back?\"\n\n\"Yes. I mean if you have been big and listened to its voice, and then\nstop. If you are _less_ than yourself after you've been _more_, your\nsoul won't stay.\"\n\n\"What do you do when your soul leaves you?\"\n\n\"You walk the Black Path.\"\n\nHe looked a child seraph.\n\n\"That path is not interesting, is it?\"\n\n\"No. You have got to know what it is, got to walk up it a little ways,\nso that you are not afraid of it any more. When you know a thing, you\nare not afraid of it any longer. Before you know, it looks all dark to\nyou. Nothing can hurt you when you are not afraid.... It's just the\nsame as with the animals. All the black things that come into you are\nanimals. If they find nothing but love and whiteness inside, they will\ngo away and not even look at you again; but if fear and darkness are\nthere, they get mad and bite.\"\n\nLeaning forward with a laugh, he added, \"You can't cut across from the\nblack path to the white. You've got to go all the way back and start\nover.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n13\n\nTHE ABBOT\n\n\nThe Abbot is now seventeen. He is doing well at Columbia. Classes and\nroutine there are mere externals. The Abbot is living a life far more\nreal than appears--a life that few men in America have learned how to\nlive. He has actually arrived at the conviction of the unfathomable\nriches that lie within. Many occultists and a few great artists have\na working knowledge of this kind. We hoped the Abbot could remain at\nStonestudy, but his parents wanted some letters after his family name\nas well as before. Our young man was enjoined to make the best of it.\nAs a matter of fact, he is putting on a lot of brain things that work\nadmirably with the inner activity which we made much of in our work\ntogether.\n\nIn another book,[14] I told of the Abbot's awakening--how we called\nhim from mysterious regions of silence and mystification, to a more\nor less adequate expression of material facts. Here was a boy almost\novershadowed by his own soul at times, inclined to be half out of the\nbody and not altogether present in the mind, when moving among the\nsordid affairs of the world--a lad who knew the arrangement of planets\nand the flow of meteoric matter better than the geography of our own\ncontinent; who swung very readily back into memories of other lives,\nmainly monastic, rather than into the episodes of his own kid-days.\n\n    [14] _Child and Country._\n\nI forget just how it was that we first sensed the giant in this boy.\nIn any case, we struck one. The ordinary training that I would give an\nAmerican youth to breathe the soul of him, was not at all necessary\nwith the Abbot. Rather, pressure was exerted from the first to make him\ncome down into our world, to make him be one of us, to make him see\nstreets and alleys, doorsteps and servant-stairs. They have succeeded\nbetter at Columbia in this regard than we were able to do, but the\nwonder and satisfaction of it all is, that the aroused mystic, the\naroused artist, has not receded--but dominates his days and work. I\nunderstand that he is considered a sensation in a literary way.\n\nHe is not different from his fellows. It is part of our ethics to\nbelong where we happen to be; to do the things that others do, better,\nif possible, than the customary performance; to begin after that to be\nour inimitable selves. It is our ideal to move about the world, not\nto attract attention, to be quiet and calm and efficacious, to be\nhelpful and humorous and wise, to furnish the swift, unerring word or\nhand or lift in the midst of affairs; to deny ourselves to no one; to\nhold ourselves superior to no one; to strive laughingly toward the big\nworkmanship, to become Players after the essential apprenticeship, to\nwin the Laugh at last, and that perfect consummation which only comes\nwith utter and instant detachment when the task is accomplished.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Abbot was sprawled in a Study shadow one summer afternoon, when I\nsuddenly saw him in relation to big sea-tales. Usually we tale-tellers\ncarry our packs. I saw the Abbot with a sea-chest that day. His was\nnot the way of the Arabian fires and the Assyrian camel paths--the\nword-spinner's usual evolutionary line. He came overseas with his\nnarratives.... I saw him in the next few years making a circle around\nall the capes, touching all the ports of Asiatic and insular water\nfronts--a bit of Conrad, a bit of Melville, a bit of Stevenson ... a\nmost sumptuous sea-chest full of shells, corals, coins and trinkets\nfrom all the Islands; feather of a woman's fan perhaps, here and there,\nsilks hazy from sea water, crooked knives from Malay Isles, whale-bone\nand shark's teeth, pearl of the mollusk, a bit of ambergris--just a top\ntray of the Chest! Deep mystic parchments farther within, a corner for\nthe sacred writings of all the world, a small type mill, a great wad of\nwhite paper, the rest mainly traces of a long glide across the ocean\nfloors.\n\nI have learned to go very slow in building a matrix of my own thought\nabout any young man's mind, yet I told the Abbot that day what I saw\nfor him--how he was bound to do the big sea-tales, how we were sick of\nsteam, sick already of the big hydroplanes, sick of all that hurries,\nall that explodes, all that has the taint of gas; that the world\npresently would be so sick of noise and explosions and show and speed,\nthat professional soothers would be in great demand, like the Japanese\nmasseurs who wait upon the sleepless; that the sick world would want\nto read of long, loose, lazy days under canvas, of the few ports left\nwhere they haven't set up recruiting offices;--that the world would be\nin desperate need of sunlight and surf and wide swinging seas--that he\nmust be one of those to usher in the old romance of the sailing craft\nagain.\n\nI told about his sea-chest better than I have told it here, but the\nAbbot's eyes didn't bulge. Presently, however, he began to grow that\nway.... His Saturdays and Sabbaths now are spent, not in Morningside\nHeights, but down among the shipping and across the harbour, where the\nbig world tramps hang out. You will see these things in his letters. I\nhave several of his yarns here, but I am not going to run any of them\nin this book. They are good yarns, but too intrinsically big yet for\nthe handling of a boy of seventeen. He has too much calibre for his\nbrain so far to carry ten thousand words to superb consummation. I want\nto spring a big tale presently. I have a lapful of his random letters\nfrom days spent down on the water front, and nights under the study\nlamp:\n\n    DEAR OLD WASP:\n\n    Morning mists over the lake, the _Pelee_ coming up out of them.\n    Just had a night with John and a corking good run of work. We've\n    been watching the sun go down from Lynster's[15] back lately, and\n    breathing the planetary heave under the stars, with the milky\n    way dipping to the lake before us. This inland place is heavy\n    to take. The weight of agriculture is like a blanket over all.\n    It takes three or four pages to bore up through the cuticle. Me\n    for a get-away to the world soon--to feed up on the hum of feet\n    and voices and cars.... Blackbirds are beginning to blacken the\n    mornings and nights again; touch of Fall and Pine-smoke this\n    morning. Real itchings in the ankles--to you! A wonderful synthesis\n    for us all when we meet up again.... I'd like to roam the world\n    with John. He is a grand pal. Could joke over an oven made out of\n    a tomato-can, as well as eat from a banquet table....\n\n    [15] The saddle horse.\n\nA day or two later:\n\n    ... Black forces strong around Stonestudy last night.... About\n    eight-thirty I rode over on Lynt, to sleep with John. Decided to\n    have a debauch with tea. While I worked on, he gathered the cups\n    and tea and electric tea-kettle together and got things going.\n    He called for me to come and make the tea. He was seated in the\n    big chair with a tableleaf in front of him, and on that was the\n    tea-kettle, boiling.... One leg slipped, and the whole boiling\n    collection went in his lap.... A prince, the way he stood it. The\n    bunch was just coming back from town. Penel' rushed over, and the\n    next was a turmoil right, cries, olive oil, lint, rags, confusion\n    of voices and footsteps--too many people and the little guy sort\n    o' lost his control--but it all came back again. Almost any minute\n    I am looking for the laugh from him. All night I was with him.\n    Penelope, the finished heroine as always. One could see the shades\n    of pain pass over John's face time and again. His nerves jump--but\n    his mouth and eyes are certainly getting a grand hue of steel....\n    Yours right along.\n\nAnother:\n\n    Hazy summer about. Blue over the lake with shadows deepening in the\n    distance. Crops drying beneath the sun. Leave it at its height--am\n    headed back for Columbia--where I'll let time shape the winds for\n    farther \"going.\"\n\n    School is not harmful to one who _is_ himself. I'll take\n    philosophy, and then be over to tell you who stole your\n    washboard.... It is no struggle, no test, for one to be lit among\n    his own as we are. One's depth of listening is best tested in\n    crowds. We've got to separate--go out and change the continents\n    into tablelands of democracy.\n\n    War seems settling on the world for years longer, but there is a\n    bigger order coming out of the incredible chaos. Each must see God\n    and worship through his work to shape the master beauty. Every\n    one's art breaks new roads which lead to one place.\n\n    Stories are coming freer every day--I've gotten across. Don't\n    know whether it's the best thing for me. But I've done it, and\n    that's what I wanted to know. It is all preparation. Results are\n    beginnings. I look back now on the summer of '14. It _was_ heaven.\n    It _was_ peace. To look at the cottage lights and hear the voices\n    of rowers through the dusk was a breath from God. It was peace, it\n    was relaxation, a deep resting of tissue for turmoil. Depth and\n    mastery to you.\n\nTHIS TO JOHN:\n\n    The thought of your scarred legs has been with me on the borderland\n    of sleep for many nights, also our hours together on the pine\n    needles. To-night, with the sun falling sadly over the iron mills,\n    I walked along the Heights and cast an eye down into brilliant\n    Harlem. The voices of the bargemen, the wheeze of tugs, the low\n    growl of outpassing vessels, an occasional curse from a freighted\n    barge, came up with the hum of the city. There seemed to be\n    some goddess entwined with sea-weed standing over the ocean of\n    structures. She held a finger to her lips for silence, and pointed\n    to the Lord knows where--well, where I felt a tumult to go, to\n    satisfy some hot quest.... I was lost to the multitude of faces\n    that sent up a passionate and incomprehensible hum ... savour of\n    youth singing in the veins.\n\n    Presently a drizzle drove me back to the room.... I reached up and\n    flicked out the lights.... In an apartment across the street lives\n    an old man who always comes to his window at dark and gazes up and\n    down the streets. His head is grey--his eyes are deep and old. The\n    light from his shaded reading lamp falls in a pool of dim yellow\n    about his carpet. Sometimes he turns out the lamp, and leaves the\n    fire-place alone. Sometimes his head falls forward on his chest,\n    and he dreams--I suppose, of boundless seas, for he was once a\n    sea-captain.\n\n    His wandering days are over--no more quest. The houses rise to his\n    eyes like one long, bleak, uncrested wave from the Arctic Sea....\n    He means old days, but we--we must never grow old; we must live\n    and ever be full of creation as the cloud is full of lightning. We\n    must, old pal, ride the deserts, drift over seas; we must spill our\n    work as we go, as night spills its stars from a casket. Fill me\n    up with the Pacific in your letters--the big sunlight--the colour\n    of the mountains where they dip and rise to clouds. I have a dry\n    palate for it all. Fill me--eye and ear and soul.\n\n    Yours deep in those scars----\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    DEAR OLD MAN:\n\n    The Hudson is very still this morning; a few battleships have swung\n    out with the tide; gulls seem to be forever passing up and down the\n    river in white eddies; smoke from the factories rises straight and\n    white. The morning sun strikes like a sledge upon the Palisades.\n    How grand that old river is, and how untiring in its endless ebb\n    and flood--almost like a solar system in the serene way it deals\n    with human traffic.\n\n    A great new sense of words has come over me lately. At the very\n    birth of language lies a chest of rich obsolete words--quite like a\n    Spanish treasure chest, with its doubloons, bezoar stones and \"pots\n    of Arica bronze.\" The artists go treasure hunting in language, and\n    a few do startle the world with their wealth. The live-long day\n    seems to me now like a shuttle driving back and forth, weaving from\n    soul to matter, a golden fabric.\n\n    This word-chest means much to me because it deals with the sea.\n    Lift up the lid, and tucked away in those little drawers lies the\n    seaman's religion in bits of turquoise, in coils of fish line\n    and hooks, in pink sea-shells, perhaps in an old violin, or in a\n    few stray books of Carlyle, Goethe, Dante and Melville's _Moby\n    Dick_. The point is we all bungle along through our world-term\n    somehow; we have our work and religion and pleasures and tales in\n    a camphor-wood chest with a brass band around it. Sometimes we\n    bring out the violin and make God-awful discords, calling it music\n    of the sea; we brighten people's eyes with our bits of turquoise;\n    terrorise them with the philosophy that Carlyle and Goethe and Moby\n    Dick have given us; we make them feel that endless _wroom, wroom,\n    wroom_ of the ocean that is washing in our souls.\n\n    Yes, we must first learn the futility of life before we can live.\n    The war teaches this lesson well, but won't it be great when\n    everybody is singing over his golden shuttle and laughing? Won't\n    it be great when the chastened New Race springs up, like green\n    shoots at the passing of winter? Won't it be great when the world\n    has grown serene and wise enough to sit down beside a blazing\n    bark fire, with the shadows of pine trees about, or near the dim\n    breakers, and consider it profitable to talk about the stars?\n\n    ... There are times when one feels he must be alone--when he wants\n    to be connected with nothing--when he wants to go to a distant and\n    high altitude, and there boil his pot of alchemy--there, where the\n    air is dust free, and the incense of one's devotion goes straight\n    up. He must listen and listen, until he believes that he hears the\n    stars humming in their courses; then the sun drawing like a magnet,\n    then a crescendo of song up to a deafening roar,--that all things,\n    all stars, are headed towards one point of balance among that whole\n    mass of sapphires we see above.\n\n    Man, but the joy of telling tales, of recording the warmth of human\n    hearts, of loving men and their ways--to fill out a morning with\n    that golden shuttle! One has but to sit and the sun on the walls\n    and the shadows in the corners, or if at night, the flame on the\n    stones of the hearth turn to words!... The old sea is full of that.\n    The heart within her breast sounds the footfalls of quest; the\n    ecstasy of life tears in her storm and in still hours she sits in\n    her glitter....\n\n    Some day we shall be together on the blessed Pacific coast. We\n    shall have bookshelves and packages of dates, bottles of cream and\n    combs of honey. We shall work with that rugged lunge of mountains\n    in our products; and that endless and insistent _wroom, wroom,\n    wroom_ of the ocean in all. Listen, here is a day as we shall have\n    it:\n\n    The sun lifting up the depth of Canyon shall awake us. After\n    we have cooked and eaten of crisp toast and honey and coffee,\n    we shall go to our desks and bring out a most rigid problem in\n    mathematics,[16] and dwell perhaps for an hour in drawing all\n    forces of thinking into play--awaking the mind--shaking off that\n    inertia of body. After that we shall penetrate the thing which\n    we wish to work upon that particular morning. We shall see its\n    functions and logical action, then begin the shuttle and weave back\n    and forth with that pliancy that sees the deepest of metaphysics in\n    an old man lighting a pipe or loitering over a pork-pie. To top the\n    morning, we'll have a meal of milk and dates. The afternoon shall\n    mean an isolation with the books--perhaps on the sand with the sun\n    tanning our backs. Both healthfully and mentally an efflux of soul.\n    At about five in the afternoon comes the humming calm--the poise\n    of mind and soul and body. Another meal of the simple foods and\n    once more, production, as the sun goes into the sea--giving one's\n    soul the might and expanse that the planets use in weaving their\n    ways. Perhaps, at ten or eleven we shall reach up, switch out the\n    electric bulb and open the door. That shall be a day mastered. Side\n    by side, we'll walk over to the cliff at whose base mumbles the\n    mighty Pacific. We shall pass no words--the earth'll be good to\n    feel and smell. We'll honour the still night of stars.\n\n    [16] Help!\n\n    That day is a privilege to earn--our bodies must suffer and become\n    scarred and jostled by the currents of people, and cursed upon\n    by foul mouths. All pleasant presently. We must know the heart\n    of a bartender as we would want to know the heart of the Christ.\n    Do you know that Masefield was a bartender? The secret of the\n    real artist is sanity. One must grow hair the medium length--keep\n    a well muscled and full lunged body--and if chronic fishermen\n    should happen in on us for a meal we must be able to argue that a\n    hickory pole is better for a pound-net than pine; or if a devout\n    pastor--that we would much rather praise God's work outside on the\n    beach....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTO JANE:\n\n    Your letter this morning after a long, wonderful run of work. This\n    is really the highest day I've had--real rugged work--bronze moving\n    pictures before me--faces--open shirts on sunburnt breasts--and,\n    of course, the eternal sea. Your letter came like a sudden bag\n    of sunlight emptied into a mist. The water became blue and the\n    promontories sharp like ink lines.\n\n    And about Steve. I understand all. The draft explains his not\n    writing. And this war--it's like a maelstrom rising higher and\n    higher. Next summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, it\n    means I go. But rather than go as a private I'm going to enlist\n    voluntarily in the aviation corps. Flying only would have as much\n    thrill as doing the climax of a story. That's like the sea. And I'm\n    not panicky or worried about it. I feel in some unconscious way\n    that the balance of the cosmos demands it. God, nobody should drag\n    now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and grows to let the new\n    green shoots come under in spring. It's like a big song. I would\n    not go to fight Germany, or France or England or America. I'd go\n    because it's a cleanser. One must play with the song of many feet\n    and express with the original song. One must flash pictures to the\n    many eyes of their own being. Oh--it's a song, the whole thing! And\n    I'm looking forward to it.\n\n    Only the ones such as John and Tom shall escape. Don't you see the\n    joy, the peace, the grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white?\n    The first year of the war, England was black with mourning. Now,\n    she is white.... The work is on me with talons.\n\n    I am looking only at the impossible heights--of a portrayal of\n    life--the rugged life in endless volumes. I have made an oath\n    silently with myself that in three years I shall do a book.... The\n    work comes now just as if I were to sit down before a fire-place\n    with shadows and light around stones, and were to grow interested,\n    with stars low on the horizon like live sparks.\n\n    And friends? A foolish question! I mean that I must be alone in\n    the formative thrall of work. I _did_ want your letter. But forget\n    pity. That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, by all the\n    stars, I do not ask for anything. The highest of all things to you\n    all.\n\n    And Steve? He has too much of the Song to be trodden or be lost or\n    be ground in mud. You are all friends--but I must be alone now. The\n    work is rising....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTO JOHN:\n\n    There ain't no sun beatin' in my doorway, and there ain't none of\n    your sacred seas and canyons around; but there is a socialist's\n    riot in the street below--kerosene torches a-going--one shaggy\n    haired enthusiast is standing on a soap box and is wagging his\n    jaw in an athletic way.... How's the fire burning under your\n    type-mill? What's the brand of smoke it gives up--poetry, action,\n    lumps of granite or ladles of ocean? I'm all lit up in this place\n    here--because things are moving--real issues are gathering--and\n    the pulse of living is so close that I can almost feel it\n    occasionally. Last Saturday, went to a place called Rockaway--and\n    oh man--rocks--rugged grey and eroded--surf bitten--gnarled,\n    twisted--and they tossed the sea's white jaws about like bits\n    of cotton. Real sea coast it was--with a little smack in the\n    purple way, her sails bellied, her mouth lapping the brine--an\n    old fisherman browsing around the shores for clams while his wife\n    hauled up the nets, basketed the cod and upturned their boat.\n\n    Put an extra stick under the machine and line a few of your\n    aphorisms.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n14\n\nTHE ARTIST UNLEASHED\n\n\nThe young workmen here do essays well, earlier than short stories.\nLonger training is required for fiction. The reason is obvious. Fiction\nwork takes brain. The Stonestudy idea is to set free the greater Artist\nwithin. Essays and ethical works are the natural fruits of the inner\nlife of the ages; story-production requires facility and development\nof the every-day working consciousness. Straight brain is needed to\narrange settings, keen development of actual tissue to note and arrange\nand remember. Also a big working surface of self-criticism must be\nprepared.\n\nThere is a quality of fiction that seems to set free a larger\nconsciousness and to bring with it settings and atmospheres of another\nage. This sort of phenomenon encourages the idea of the continuity of\nconsciousness--before and after the three-score-and-ten. It may be\nthat the greater the Artist, the more of these veins of syntheticated\nexperience are open to his every-day working mind. That may really\nbe what sumptuous artistic equipment is--the capacity to open up the\nold loves and scenes and adventures of the long road. Intuition is\nexplained as the use of the result of massed experiences, intellect the\ncoping with one at a time; intuition, a light that flashes from peak to\npeak, intellect as a running fire up and down from height and vale.\n\nCertainly intellect alone will never make a great drama of life and\nlove, yet action and romance of the present hour draw hard upon one's\npresent life training and the faculties and tastes of his immediate\nculture--actual brain possession and the ordering thereof. A child can\nportray superbly well some ancient imprint upon the Soul, even the\npassages of his own initiations through earth, water, air and fire,\nhis brain not conscious of the real nature of what is coming forth;\nyet, the same child cannot put the cohering line through a series of\nepisodes occurring under his own notice. Something of this mental\ngrasp is necessary to make the artful effect required in a short\ntale. The child's mind, in the first place, is trained to listen and\ninterpret the experiences of the larger consciousness; in the second\nset of conditions, he is forced to rely upon actual brain tissue which\nrequires the training and culture of the years.\n\nArt is composition. The farther you go, the finer the tools. It is\ndifficult to train the fingers to intricate tricks of weaving, or\nthe brain to sort and place the facts and colours and surprises of\na present-day narrative or tale, but the soul may be called upon to\nexpress through the narrow temples of an awakened child its cosmic\nunderstanding, its ordered firmament.\n\nDecades of observation and reporting; firm and verified actuality of\nknowledge and opinion; to these, added experience and the excellence\nof order--such is the training of the intellectual artist who times\nhis production to his own generations. He pays the price in pain and\nsubjection to the things that are; he knows well the meaning of labour;\noften, though he may still laugh as an artist, he has forgotten how to\nlaugh as a man.\n\nMy desk here is covered with papers and poems of a beauty this\nintellectual artist cannot reach, of a freedom he can never know, until\nhe lifts the torch of his consciousness out of and above the brain,\nmaking that serve quite as his knees bend and serve. Thinking of these\nthings to-day, the door of the Study opened and the Little Girl gave\nme her work. She writes things of the larger consciousness without\neffort, but finds it hard and wearing to narrate the immediate matters\nof life. To her, the fine short story of the present hour is the great\naccomplishment, the ideal she is working toward.\n\nWith another she goes often to the cities--rambling among the\nrooming-houses, cheaper restaurants and mills. She means to work in\nthe mills soon--to forget herself and forget us for a time, to be\nwith the harder-lucked girls whom she loves with thrilling passion.\nShe has brought home from these little adventures wonderful stories\nof the patience and the laughter and the heroism crowding like hidden\nsacred presences about the duller lives. She brings a humour to the\ntelling of the divine secrets of the poor--the clutching pang for food,\nthe soldier going, his baby coming, the tortured spine, the stunted,\nthe darkened, the wasted--an irresistible divinity about it all--pain\nimpermanent, joy enduring. Back of the lacking eyes and leaking lives,\nshe sees wonders that Zola never saw, that none can see with mere\nintelligence, that none can dream, who sees only the here and now,\nwho has not learned to laugh at the so-called injustices of men, who\ncannot see the greater order to come because the present chaos is so\ndevastating.\n\nOne may report minuti\u00e6 of torments, mass the items of degradation and\nbring forth a great document of the underworld--but these are mere\nfoundations. The Builders bring the dream, they live the hope, they\nopen the long-road consciousness, they substantiate their visions of\nbetter days, bring order and coherence to all the splendid toil of the\nintellectualist; they raise their edifice upon _all_ that is done....\nHere is the Little Girl's work of to-day's writing:\n\n\nMEDITATION\n\nIn the night the Master came down to a woman who lay sad and sleepless\nin a dark house. He came so near that she felt his holy radiance. Her\nsoul breathed; her body ceased to tremble; she felt within his sacred\ncircle. The Master smiled and said:\n\n\"Why do you not sleep?\"\n\nThe woman answered, \"I am carried away by thoughts that will not hush.\nNight after night I lie here so bitterly close to old dreams. I realise\nthat they are not worthy, but my brain is full of them.\"\n\nThe Master smiled again. \"There is a way to compel the silence of the\nbrain.\"\n\n\"I have not found it,\" said the woman.\n\n\"Learn to be the soul,\" the Master said. He suggested a way to\nbegin--then was gone.\n\nThe rest of that night the woman thought of his words. Deeper and\ndeeper his words sank into her heart. When morning came, a happiness\nbrooded within; she dressed quickly and went out.... Back of her\nlittle house rose the golden brown hills. She climbed, and at the top\nof the nearest, sat down. The peace and purity and fragrance of the\nsun-steeped hills filled her soul. For a long time she thought in\nsilence, then slipping off her loose white sandals, said: \"I begin with\nthe grass. Yes, I begin with my _feet_.... How wonderful you are--so\nready to obey, to give your service at any time! What would happen\nif you carried me other than my will? Supposing some day I should be\nwalking fast to the house of my beloved, when you suddenly took me the\nother way!\"\n\nShe laughed, and added: \"You stay with me all my life, and little by\nlittle are carrying me up the shining path to the Father's house. And\nyet--how strange! I am not you.... And my knees, how wonderful and\nwilling--all limber and full of life--helping me in all ways to do all\nthings--bending gently when I bow in holy communion, expressing joy\nthrough free, easy movements, mute, yet strong before pain! There is\nnothing more wonderful in the world than you. Yet--I am not my knees.\n\n\"And you, old heart,\" she added. \"You have endured the keenest pain;\nyou have loved and given yourself, have hated and become black only\nthrough pain to whiten again--old heart of many rendings--until\nall life was tragedy, and you almost ceased to beat. Little heart,\nsanctuary of the soul--room for _his_ rest.... Yet I am not the heart!\n\n\"And the white throat in which the lotus unfolds its mystic petals of\nlight--I am not the throat!... And the mind, stream for the soul's\nfulfilment--listener, runner, interpreter of light--mate of the soul in\nall things, ever ready, sparkling with the inner fire,--I am _not_ the\nmind. You can hurt me no longer. I am _free_!\"\n\nThe woman sitting alone upon the hilltop, paused again. \"What am I?\"\nshe almost cried.\n\nIt was as though the hills, the air and the rising sun joined her in\nthe answer--\"_I Am_, ... Longer than the living flame leaps within, _I\nAm_. Longer than sun and planets radiate light, _I Am_. Longer than\nworlds give birth to form, _I Am_. I am one with the rocks and the sea,\none with the warmth and light, one with the earth, one with Humanity.\n\n\"I am Humanity. _I Am._\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is only when the Little Girl brings in a bit of fiction that we\nremember her years. The brain that even now can polish a detached\nincident, or clip into firing-form a bit of humour of the street,\ncannot as yet order the narrative to a culminating effect. She is in\nher brain, which is only fourteen, struggling with the matters of time\nand space, wherein only lie pain and bewilderment.\n\nArt is long. The training of the hand and intellect requires the\nyears--but not the labour, not the agony, not the mad strain supposed\nto prepare one for an artistic career by those who believe mental\nequipment to be all.... The key to this whole discussion is the fact\nthat the brain can be developed more in a year through inner awakening\nthan in a decade by the usual methods of external impacts alone.... The\nideal education is the balancing of the without with the within--the\ntallying of the world without with the world within--the same old\nstory of the kingdom without clearing its correspondences with the\nkingdom within.\n\nThe Little Girl's ideal is to do great stories. They challenge her by\ntheir very difficulty. When I see where she stands now, and think of\nthe far ways we elders went to learn the game; when I see what the\ntwenty-year-olds are doing now, how they command their mysticism--a\nharder task for me than the accomplishment of physical results; when I\nsee the inner bloom and co-ordination and the inimitable surfaces which\ncome to all the arts by the development of the soul life first, the\nlistening for the Master within--I want to get my hands on them all,\nupon all the young builders of the New Race. I want at once to awaken\nwithin them the Spectator--the One who cannot be swung back and forth\nin the pairs of opposites, who cannot give himself to the partisans,\nwho has glimpsed the Plan and offers it full adoration, who says\naccordingly that the best possible thing that can happen is the thing\nthat happens next. These are the young Players who will reveal life by\nliving it--portray life as naturally as breathing, whose equipment is\nnot possessions, not even brain possessions, but spiritual _en rapport_\nwith all, oneness with all life.\n\nI remember struggling for effects. These young people breathe\neffects. I remember style as a studied attainment. These young people\nacknowledge but one style--that is being one's self.... I want to set\nmany of them free from within outward. In their gladness at the finding\nof themselves, they will go forth to include the world; they will bring\nto it the compassion which enfolds all, reveals all.... Love the world\nwell and you will understand it. Love the world well, and you will\nwrite well to it. Give it yourself, and the world is yours.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n15\n\nWORK IN SHORT STORIES\n\n\nThe Little Girl sketched this impression of an Indian Summer Dusk:\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n... Just now the great blue dusk, after an Indian summer day. It\ndeepens and seems to laugh, then all is night. Huge black clouds roll\nup, promising a storm. Against them, tall, selfish, unafraid, stand\nthe poplar trees. The great Mother of the dusk is singing, the God in\nNature is singing, and Nature's belongings, all of them, sing in this\nmagical moment. One feels it all in one's self, feels the glory, the\nromance, the very core-life of the Universe. The matings too, taking\nplace in the grass and air; the matings of the two streams, the two\ngrains of sand; the matings of butterflies, birds and bees. It all\nflows through one's body like music and honey and sunshine....\n\nNothing but space is around me. I feel all hollow inside. Power and\nbeauty and all things else flow through ... and out, like a sieve.\nMy body is far below me, yet it will be taken care of. It does not\nstumble, nor make any clumsy, unnecessary movement. Finding it alone\nand forgotten, Rhythm catches it in her gentle arms. Slowly, softly,\ngently, Rhythm carries it along, the same that carries the deer so\nswiftly in the forest, the mountain sheep from ledge to ledge and over\nvalleys, and that which waves the trees' long arms so gracefully....\nThe night moves on its way, the threat of storm is passed. I am back\nagain--an untellable freshness has sweetened hair and clothing. I am\nall glowing inside.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis was done two years ago. There was a kind of dream story which she\nrecently finished, gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way\nthat ruined it for the general reader. It was all new to her that there\ncould possibly be two ways to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or\nsix story-writers were present for the reading, and out of the fruits\nof that evening, we surely saw the lesser beauty give way before a\ngreater. We forecasted the readers of the future, who would prefer the\nmore spiritual, more challenging story texture and d\u00e9nouement.\n\nThere has always been The Few--glad to discover the real, answering\nto interior order and clarity, \"straight grain,\"--but the fact for\nenthusiasm now is that the world is being peopled with the awakened.\nThese young moderns are recognising each other from day to day, pulling\ntogether for better social order, utilising the wisdom of the East,\nand the drive of the West--labouring in new paths, daring new leaps,\nworking out philosophies as fresh and ancient as the dawn and, what\nis straighter to the point, demanding modern books, written out of an\nintegrity to match their own....\n\nShort story writing in America is less a trade and more of an art\nsince Edward J. O'Brien, the poet, took his chair in the flow of the\noutput and began to say which was which. There are a number of people\nin America who know a good short story when they see one; this is\ntrue among those who buy short stories, but editors cannot always buy\nwhat they want. A deal of mechanism in a magazine has to be oiled and\nenergised by different kinds of minds from those who paint the pictures\nand write the tales. O'Brien knew both ends--also he knew that big,\nunobtrusive part of the market that looks long and pointedly for the\nreal tale.\n\nHe is a queer boy--from the bleak fishing grounds north of Boston.\nHe is in no hurry. You couldn't tell if he really wants anything. He\ndoesn't seem to want much--for O'Brien.... After he had his main line\nand most of the ramifications of his idea laid, he told the editors to\nsend on the stories. Most of them did. O'Brien did a lot of work in a\nfew weeks, did it startlingly well. He started something.... Now, if a\nwriter sits down, suddenly struck with a fine idea for a tale, and this\nfine idea precludes the possibility of selling it for a high price--the\nwriter dares go ahead and finish the task, because he knows O'Brien\nwill get to the thing in due time, and that if it is really what it\nseems and the performance of the idea adequate, then the work will not\nbe utterly lost.\n\nAs a matter of fact, this is a bit of self-placation, since no work is\nlost; no one gets the value of a big thing to anything like the degree\nof the man who does it; no big thing is lost from the world, not even\nif dropped in a sewer, if it is really important for the world to\nhave it. We are all a bit too heavily handicapped with our own idea\nof what the world should have from our own shops--at the same time,\nwhen we are young, we pant for the quicker return, the answering hail\nwithin reason--at least, within time and space. Now O'Brien has come,\nstrangely arrived, his proper phylacteries in place, the touch of\ntinted haze about his head, the right man.\n\nBack of all, however, is the workman's own spine. That's the best\nthing to lean on; and when the going is heavy, to learn to do without.\nWe often remind each other in Chapel of the modern artist Cezanne,\nwho moved about his painting for many years, painting _the thing_,\nsatisfying his soul, and leaving his canvasses around in the fields for\nthe peasants to laugh at or mull over.... They have long since been\nbrought in out of the rain--those canvasses. I forget the incredible\nthousands his littlest sketch brings now.... But Cezanne got the films\nout of himself--tallied them off--the landscapes within and without,\nwhen it did him most good. It never fails. What was good for the artist\nis good for the rest of us afterward.\n\nMeanwhile much is still to do in the story world. The big smash of\nthe moving pictures hasn't cleared from our game yet. It will be the\ncause of greater tales before the end is seen, for you can't portray\nthe realities of romance upon a flat screen. For a time the many\nthought it was no longer necessary to learn to read, because there was\nsuch a torrent of pictures everywhere, but it was only through the\npictures that the few has finally managed to realize how marvelously\npictorial mere words are, and how few words are required when they are\nimaginatively driven. One day in Stonestudy we discussed these story\nand screen affairs, looking ahead somewhat to better times than these.\nOne of our young men, whose story is told in a later chapter, put down\nthe things we talked about. This is Shuk's writing:\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA fresh and different vitality is manifest to-day in American\nliterature. At various points around us, dealing with words, colours\nand the subtler tools, are active young workmen who for the first\ntime, in the fullest sense, may be termed \"North American.\" The first\ncharacteristic of this new element, these young flexible and vigorous\nminds, is that they are workmen--not labourers, not professionals, not\nprimarily artists in anything unless it be life--but workers first, and\nafter that novelists, poets, musicians, painters or politicians. They\nare not competitors. They have not forgotten the warm side of justice,\nbut they know well the stern face of compassion--they know that it\ntakes Christ and anti-Christ to make a world. They are neither modest\nnor egotistical, being for the most part busy and intensely alive. This\nimplies their joy.\n\nThe great love story has not been written. The few great love stories\nof the world have to be pieced out by the imagination. We find that\nwe have been told that certain are great love stories, but they do\nnot stand examination. The classic form will not do for the New Age.\nThere is to be a new language--for literary handling. It may be called\nAmerican, to distinguish it from English in the accepted form. It is to\nbe brisk, brief, brave and ebullient--to meet the modification all must\nreckon with--the screen-trained mind.\n\nAmerican-mindedness of itself, cannot yet accept a great love-story. It\nwould be called \"sentimental\" if not lascivious. The average American\nis an impossible lover, making it incident to business. The real and\nthe sham are equally above him. He would not know when to be exalted\nor when to be ashamed. He thinks his own passion is evil, and thus\nmakes it so. The great love-story can only be written with creative\ndynamics, and can only be accepted as yet by the few of corresponding\nreceptivity. There is nothing soft about true romance. Some passionate\nsinger of the New Age will likely appear right soon, his story to have\nthe full redolence and lustre of the heart, his emotions thoroughbred,\nhis literary quality at the same time crystalline with reality.\n\nThe big adventure-story has not been done so far. The day of guns,\nhorses and redskins is over. Photoplays have developed these fiction\nresources to the limit, proving to those writers born to be modern\nthat their full tales can never be shown on a flat surface. There\nwill be undercurrents, overtones, invisible movements, tensions upon\nthe reader, not only from between the lines, but between words.\nThe story-teller of the New Age may handle his theme in words of\none syllable, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to be\nexplained--only responded to by minds which cannot be satisfied by\ntwo-plane production--minds which demand more of life than the camera\nsees.\n\nThe real war-story of to-day, even for to-morrow, ought to arrive soon.\nThis is an age for an epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will\narise--a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist,\nthe poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and\nstatesman, even the iciest aces of the air--and tell the story of\nWar, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous\ngreed; vast far-reaching causes and the slow, inevitable hell of\neffects--told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones are merely\npawns in a Planetary Game.\n\nInclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with\nthe modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday\nthe wreckers and agnostics--to-day the specialists and onesided\nenthusiasts--to-morrow, the embodiers, the includers.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n16\n\nVALLEY ROAD GIRL\n\n\nThe Valley Road Girl, who gave us the title, and helped us to see how\nthe New Race will become in due time the planetary hive, asked not to\nappear in this book. A letter this morning asks it again. She is in\nthe stress and heat of a series of ordeals, learning what it means\nsuddenly to be parted from friends and the centre of her work. A wise\nand sensitive young woman--I rather thrill over her sufferings. We\ndon't commiserate; we congratulate, when one is called to a stretch\nof particularly stiff and solitary going. We know that one must be\npassionately worthy to take the big-calibred ordeals. There is pain\nto all births--pain, the precursor of greater joys. Pain is not the\nexpansion of the flower to the sun; that is joy, that comes afterward.\nPain is the necessary rupturing of the bud-sheaths before the final\nunfolding into the new dimension. Pain is within, inarticulate--merely\nfinds a correspondence in some outer cause.\n\nPart of the Valley Road Girl's letter follows:\n\n... It hurt to let that last Lamentation go to you. I thought of the\ntimes when I had put up a braver fight, bolstered only with pride.\nBut pride is low now, and still dwindling in the glass. Even the gods\nwithdraw from the pathetic. They love us more when we challenge with\ndoubt than when we implore. The many are God-fearing. They must have\nsome divine power to shift their responsibility upon. They can ask the\nFlame to cleanse them, but quail at working out their own salvation. I\nhave done some crying out to God, but I am finished. The one good path\nI have is Work--self-expression every day.\n\nI made another mistake--in looking back. Regret identifies us with\nthe past and impedes progress. Youth is smileless, inclined to regard\nto-day's struggles as ultimate evil, but gradually we learn that\nall things pass. To consider everything as in transition, we place\nourselves in the very current of growth.... For rapid journeying, we\nmust travel light. We can only carry along the spirit of things--the\nessence of our joys and lessons. That's what I have from Chapel days.\n\nI blush for many hours since. Sometimes I have felt as if I were on\na vast plain and there was no God nor earth nor the quality of love\nanywhere, but only I--deathless--in long, hideous travail, all life to\nbe tested against this Me!...\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHow I want to write! Every day more awe enfolds the dream. Days\nbring me closer to the Town. The war has deepened the hearts of all\nthe young people here, especially the women. Young women are very\nwonderful to me. They have a certain loveliness of body that comes of\ngirl-whiteness within--thoughtful tenderness about them, and something\nelse, a lightness that may be just youth. It attracts me because I have\nnever felt it.\n\nI do not care if the gods laugh at my ambitions to write. By the very\nsign that we are victims of matter now, we shall become victors. I\nwant the bottom--down among the deeps of pain, where all the sorrow of\nthe world is my sorrow; all tears, my tears.... I am not ready for the\nHive. No compromise. To accept less in one's work than the dream--that\nis failure.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Valley Road Girl is eighteen. She has hardly been away from the\nlittle town by the lake shore. She is held to it queerly still. I\nexpect her to make the place long-lived in the memory of many novel\nreaders. I see the big book of the country-side about her--a gallery\nof quaint and curious faces--done with her stern, sweet power. I have\nseen this big book building about her, as I see the top trays of The\nAbbot's Sea Chest. These are the days of her sketching and tearing\ndown. Deep draughts of life call to her, deeps of religion, deeps of\ncosmic memory--and all about is the little town. The meaning has come\nto her at last. Already she has turned to love the nearest; loving the\nnearest will unfold the big book and set her free. Six hundred pages\nI call for--the leisurely vibration, terrible intensity of romantic\nmoments, passion of the fields, the hideous mockery of narrow, brittle\nlives, the country-wife worn glassy with routine and insane monotony,\nand the young of the country-side--quick bloom, pure youth falling into\ncoarseness before its form is finished, the real and immortal behind it\nall. These are her properties. Hundreds of pages have been written and\nprayerfully destroyed. Thus is she setting herself free.\n\nI have a paper of hers on the spiritual adventures of a smileless\nchild--which I liked much when it came in, more than two years ago. The\nValley Road Girl is close to us in all our preparing and building; so\nthat these chapters would be strange without her voice:\n\n    ... Fire was always terrible, so my first aspirations were caused\n    by fear of hell _below_. Before that, I had wanted to laugh when\n    told to pray. As I grew, I thought much of the heavenly state, but\n    could find only vague pictures. Recently I asked a country minister\n    his idea of heaven, and he seemed uncertain. He could only assure\n    me that it was a desirable place. Yet children always wonder about\n    their destination, questioning as they journey.\n\n    I started early to pray--a grim affair; at first crying out through\n    fear or hurt. God was too awful for such intimacies so I took the\n    Christ figure of the Trinity into my confidence. Just here came\n    a strange transition. It didn't seem sufficient for me to think\n    those prayers: I felt I must state them clearly or my wish might\n    be ambiguous. Even to-day, I find that only expressing a thing\n    simplifies it for me.\n\n    If there were acquaintances whose lives were touched with beauty\n    or romance, I prayed for them, but mostly named _my_ wants. I made\n    the discovery that the intensity put forth in holding the image of\n    a desire brings it into the world. Man may call the answer _God_,\n    but that seems his own power. I have sometimes thought of Will with\n    its divine kindred, Wisdom and Love, as the Three Who stood first\n    before His Face.\n\n    To-day we dream, and to-morrow our hands are filled. I remember\n    the early Chapel days when the Old Man would say, \"Be careful what\n    you want--you are apt to get it,\"--with a great laugh and mystery\n    playing about his words. How truly one comes to realise that.\n    When I started at Stonestudy, the town-people used to ask how we\n    were taught,--if our English and story-structure were principally\n    considered as in the schools. I could only tell them, \"Oh, no, not\n    like school!\" Then I tried to explain Chapel and they wondered how\n    that manner of education could make us writers. Yet our writing\n    improved with the days. Work, a few weeks old, embarrassed us with\n    its defects.\n\n    Then I actually tried to discover just how we were being helped.\n    To a young aspirant, there is awe about an artist; we had come to\n    listen. The same thoughts expressed in homely words wouldn't have\n    quickened us. The Old Man's sentences were rich with figures that\n    clarified everything. We began to _see_ Stonestudy. About this time\n    at home I used to start anything that interested me, \"I've got a\n    picture----\" Chapel had helped me, as only one can help another, by\n    quickening the imagination.\n\nThat was what drew me to the Little Girl--her vivid impression of\nthings. She could make _her_ listener see also. Speaking of children\nwhom school had overwhelmed, she used to tell us of their \"lacking\neyes\" and the world that had crushed them, as the \"solid world.\" ...\nI think that was the secret of her faith in fairies and Nature's most\nelusive agencies. I listened doubtfully at first, for school had\ntampered with my once-ready belief. One had first to trust her words,\n\"If you believe, you will see.\" And I recalled my early religious\nexperiences, based on \"According to your faith, be it unto you.\"\n\nThis is the \"really\" religion--faith in the hidden world. We conceive\nits light gradually as the seed pushes its way upward through the soil.\nAll religion that does not make the workshop a Chapel--the place for\npicturing heaven, is less than we know. I seem to confuse religion with\nthe stimulating of the imagination. It is because they are one to me.\n\nThe Valley Road Girl has a beautiful sister who was rather reluctant to\ncome to Stonestudy. She did not think she could ever belong; had no\nthought ever of writing or taking part in our things, yet none of the\nyoung people ever brought us more than Esther. I found the following\npages about these two sisters together among the writings of the Little\nGirl:\n\n    ... On the floor below lived two girls who came often to visit\n    their beloved friends in the attic. One was a year or so older than\n    the other, and most serious and sober, constantly hunting for her\n    own philosophy and making her own religion, praying for power and\n    vision, fearing lest she fail at the appointed task, suffering over\n    conditions, revolting at times, loving her work and her sister with\n    an everlasting passion. That was the one whom we call the Valley\n    Road Girl.\n\n    The other was a perfect giver, born with the thought of her own\n    smallness, unwilling to accept a different point of view on the\n    subject from another. A spirit--wide eyes, frail body, living her\n    life calmly, objecting to nothing, obeying others, loving all,\n    frightening her parents with her absolute goodness. And that was\n    Esther.\n\n    When she came at last to Stonestudy, her cushion with the others\n    round the fire had been waiting for many months. For we all knew\n    her; through the Valley Road Girl we knew Esther belonged to us.\n    One Chapel day later, when she remained at home, we wondered how\n    we'd ever manage without her.... Occasionally Esther brought a\n    paper with her and laid it under the black stone--a bit of verse,\n    perhaps a dream, or something deep and mysterious from her soul.\n    One day it was a picture of the Desert, I remember.... Noonday, the\n    white heat of the sun reflected by the sand, the brown of a camel's\n    eyes, the long road to travel--caravans--then night--the sound of\n    low music, women dancing, the red of fires on black oily bodies of\n    slaves.... Esther made us see it all.\n\n    There were long days in the woods--spring quickening life in all\n    things. We'd gather moss and violets and talk endlessly, Esther\n    always so free these memorable days, and happy. It was the dance\n    that set her free--her expression through the dance--a dancer's\n    body and soul, her wonderful quality of forgetfulness of self, made\n    her perfect. Literally she could surrender herself to the music,\n    trust it, and be carried in perfect grace and rhythm. We watched\n    her unfold, the beauty of her deepening in every way. Her joy in\n    life grew. She became like a nymph in the pure light of summer....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs was set down in the other book,[17] it was the Little Girl who\nstarted these educational proceedings. Less than four years ago I\nsuggested that she remain home from school, and take a stroll with me\ndown the Shore. I was a bit bored at the time, doubtless heavy with\nthe sense of parental care. To my best knowledge, the Little Girl was\nin no way extraordinary. She does not seem so now. It seemed natural\nfor her to turn in the chapter on \"Tom\" in this book. I did not think\nof it as a brimming thing for a child to perform. Incidentally Steve\nbrought in an essay last night on the young lovers and beauty lovers of\nthe New Race, covering matters which I planned as necessary for me to\ndo in this book. _Weaving_, that's really what a book from the group\namounts to--weaving, more and more. From time to time in years to come,\nI hope to take a few weeks and spin a book.\n\n    [17] Child and Country.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is only in matters having to do with actual world-facts that the\nLittle Girl ever reminds us that she is only finishing her second\nperiod of sevens. There is no one to whom I go more often for wisdom or\nconsolation. Her comradeship is complete. Others forget the matter of\nage in relation to her. Her big friendship with the Valley Road Girl\noverrides four years of growth most formidable in the usual attachment.\nThe soul is out of time and space. The same thing is more emphatically\nshown in the case of John and The Abbot--nine and seventeen.\n\nThe Little Girl reads very little--not nearly so much as I do. She\ncarries no weights. The slightest tendency toward precocity would\nsicken me of the whole business. This growth and development which\nI speak of is not intellectual in the acquisitive sense. I take the\nyoung minds away from long division examples. One of those a day is\nplenty. Excessive use of the young brain is dangerous. One should\nhandle brain-tissue with delicacy. One should learn well how to think,\nso as to escape lesion and avoid rupture of those most delicate fibres.\nAny strain sounds a warning. The use and development of the brain from\noutside is only safe so long as the process is joyous. The development\nof the brain from within is natural and continually felicitous. No two\nprocesses are alike--for the Soul perfects the instrument to serve\nItself. In due time the brain, thus trained, will bring forth the\none perfect and inimitable product. Trained by the world solely from\nwithout, its product is a mere standard at best.\n\nI have met absolutely no ill results, not even from the gentle\nencouragement of the practice of concentration among children. This is\nstiff brainwork for a time--stiff because the brain must be mastered.\nBut the brain that has learned to listen for the voice of the Master\nwithin, is already using the fruits of concentration, and as I have\nwritten before, the children master the distractions more easily than\ndeveloped personalities. One must learn how to think obediently before\none can silence the thoughts. One must silence the brain to hear the\nSoul, but one must _be_ the Soul to silence the brain.\n\nIntellectual children have been brought to me several times. They\nlack the essential reverence. They wish to show me what they know;\ntheir parents goad them into this showing. These are not the new race\ntype that thrills us.... I cannot help you out of a predicament if my\nhands are full of bundles. I cannot bring to you the one spontaneous\nutterance that you long for, if my brain is crowded with the things of\nto-day and yesterday. I place upon the ground my bundles, and give you\na hand. I clear my mind of all its recent and immediate acquisitions,\nand by the very force and matrix of your need (if I am the valuable\nteacher) I supply, from the infinite reservoir of massed experiences,\nan intuitional answer that will not leave you as you were.\n\n... God pity the good little brain-pans so heavily piled in public\nschools, and the brave little memories so cruelly taxed. I want to\nbrush all junk away from them, let their souls breathe, let them\nbecome as little children, show them how the greatest workmen and the\nmaster-thinkers are great and masterful, simply because they have\nlearned how to become as little children.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n17\n\nBEAUTY\n\n\nWe develop through expression. I find these paragraphs among many of\nthe Little Girl's for which there is no place here:\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    ... Everything in pouring out one's dreams and thoughts, one's\n    very soul into words! It is relief, fulfilment; it completes\n    all thoughts and dreams; it gives them strength. They are\n    only half-powers if left unexpressed. In the moments of great\n    outpouring, order forms--the inner order that is lasting and\n    divine, the order that every man must have running rhythmically\n    through him, before his great task can be given him by the Master.\n    If man lives in truth, he lives in order. There is no truth without\n    order--no order without truth. They are one at the top. There are\n    no mistakes in all the Holy Universe.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe speak much of the Master. As every artist becomes significant, I\nthink he is more and more conscious, deep within, of the presence of\none whose word is absolute. The great artist isolates himself from\ncriticism--that is, he may listen to the observations of a child or the\nyoungest critic and find values, yet his life is passed in doing things\nothers cannot do, and for which there are no criteria. He loses the\nsense of all laws at the last, in the great ebullition of his soul--to\nget its records down. He is not ignited with expression as formerly,\nbecause he _is_ expression. His establishment in flesh is for that, and\nno other reason. His Master nears. I think of Tolstoi so intimately and\nCarlyle in these things.... We are close, in our best moments, to the\nShop Itself. Kipling touched this mystic arrangement in his inimitable\n_L'envoi_, \"When earth's last picture is painted----\"\n\nMore and more life teaches us the treachery of matter, as it teaches\nus how to love. One by one the things we turn to, vanish, leaving us\nrent and crying out. Thus we learn to turn to the Unseen. We long at\nlast for our particular archetype who embodies potentially the ideal\nof parent and teacher and beloved. The last tearing torrential love\nof the flesh is for the mate, the first of our more purely spiritual\naspirations for the Master.... The good days of apprenticeship give us\nthe basic ideal of him--the pure workmanship, the love of truth, need\nfor utter comprehension with few words--the love of one another, yet\nthe absolute essential so hard to learn, to cling to nothing in the\nrealm of change--all these are incentives to the quest of the Master.\nMore and more we succeed in turning our love to what we still call the\nUnseen from old habit. The very love that you turn to the Master builds\nthe path by which he comes to you. He can only appear in your own\nthought-form....\n\nIt comes to us so often that we make our own heavens. So many forget\nthat we require beauty as well as goodness and truth. Not sages alone,\nnot saints alone--but artists, workmen and players in beauty, as\nwell as in love and wisdom. The Master will come to you in your own\nthought-form; your heaven will fill your own conception. Saints of the\nelder bigotries will have angels with feathers and peasant feet. Those\nwho have clung so hard to their bodies, must galvanise them again with\nrheumatism and senility and mortgage-ridden minds.\n\nI tell them here to be careful what they dream--to take all the loves,\nthe safe things, love of child and mother and mate, love of comrades,\nthe passion for dying for another ... to take Nature's perfect\nthings,--the grains, the fruits, bees, stars, devas, poems--majesty\nof mountain, strength of the field, holy breath of sea--the highest\nmoments of song and thought and meetings ... to take all that is\nconsummate for the thought-form--to build the coming of the Master\nin that--light from the Unseen--to build for eternity.... The Master\ncan only show you that much of Himself as your own highest picture\ncontains.... This is the practice of his presence, so liberating to the\nminds of dreamers and workmen and mothers.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSteve has done some thinking on the quest of beauty in relation to the\nyoung lovers of the New Race. The rest of the chapter is his writing:\n\n    Beauty is the lustre shining from within, because of the sheer\n    intensity of being. It is proof of spiritual battles won, a gift\n    earned by ages of renunciation, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. It\n    is manifest balance, order and serenity gained from isolation and\n    self-conquest. The glow seen about the heads of saints is really\n    there. It is a splendour not of earth, the same ray from which\n    beauty is drawn.\n\n    A certain tragic joy and a terrible serenity, that is mistaken for\n    melancholy, often goes with beauty. It is the result of turning\n    back voluntarily for work in the world, renouncing possible bliss\n    for the service of humanity. Chief among the spiritual victories\n    mentioned, is this turning back, facing the stream of evolution\n    again, and all its cold metal, for new work. So its light is a\n    light from behind--a reflection to the world of the wonders ahead.\n\n    Beauty is an indication of the weave of one's higher life,\n    of developed discrimination, material proof of the perfecting\n    ordination of the life, will and emotions. All that is beautiful\n    is good, all that is good must be beautiful. Ugliness is false and\n    fleeting, a confession of sickness and turmoil within. There can\n    absolutely be no great love without a sheer worship of beauty, not\n    for itself, not from the \u00e6sthetic standpoint--no temperamental\n    moth-man ethics--but the calm mastery of its inner meaning, which\n    is mastery of life itself.\n\n    This does not mean that we must love things merely because they are\n    beautiful, but because of the truth we know to be in them, manifest\n    in their beauty. Also it means that we must never accept a thing\n    merely because it is demonstrated, or seek truth for truth's sake.\n    Beauty is the one lasting criterion.\n\n    As soon as we truly see these things, we know the secret of real\n    love, which is beauty's expression. The lover is no longer lover\n    only, but love-master--all domination of the sexes then becomes a\n    slavery of the past. The lover is parent, mate and child in one.\n    Each is also the other's teacher.\n\n    At the beginning these lovers give each other complete freedom,\n    knowing that nothing can be maintained that is held; that joyous\n    freedom is its own wise bondage. The finding of the lover is never\n    the end of the quest as in the world. Rather, it is the beginning.\n    Never is there a lying back in satisfaction or inconsequence. That\n    would be failure for themselves as well as their children. Growth\n    is the goal. Growth goes on after the mating at a rate never before\n    approached, for each has been opened, liberated. Every relation is\n    evident alternately in this growth, parent and child, teacher and\n    pupil, master and disciple, madonna and messiah. At certain high\n    moments, the other appears as the Master himself; through his eyes\n    the mysteries of the universe are seen.\n\n    The three-ply love yearns to give, knowing that by giving all one\n    gains all. It yearns to protect, to mother, to love failings and\n    make them virtues. It loves the failings as well as the gifts,\n    treasuring all the little humanesses of the loved one, searching\n    them out zealously. Never are they foolish enough to expect\n    perfection at first. Every fault is told point-blank, at any cost\n    of pain or injury to the other. For it is the god-given privilege\n    of each to bring suffering to the other, because he loves that\n    other more than life, more than self, more than happiness, and it\n    is understood that their mutual goal is the priceless heritage,\n    perfection. Nothing short of perfection remains. For this all else,\n    even life, is a paltry price. There is no hiding the truth. This is\n    the supreme test for great loves, great friendships. Both mates are\n    equal. _Equality_--the word comes to mean more than worship.\n\n    This philosophy is justified by the law of sacrifice. That which\n    we love more than life is ours more wholly than ourselves, by\n    the great law. In fact, we cannot belong to ourselves; we must\n    work upon ourselves until we are big enough to cast body mind and\n    soul in the heart of another, without fear. Separateness--the\n    pitiful sense of self, has long been the prime illusion of the\n    world, the cause of all lust, wars and torments. Those who are not\n    great enough lovers to surrender all to their love find pain and\n    disparity throughout. They have yet to learn that all that belongs\n    to the self-willed, only half belongs, for it has not been given\n    its freedom.\n\n    In loves such as the New Age is bringing in, true creativeness is\n    touched. In worshipping both the soul of her child and that of\n    her mate more than her own, the mother is given for the moment\n    a beam from the divine shaft from the Creator. For that moment\n    she has over-reached herself. Just so is the new love constantly\n    over-reaching itself in the cause of the loved one, a divine\n    madness the world has not begun to dream of--to belong and to have,\n    to be in and through and around the loved one. Thus to over-reach\n    is to create. The ordinary one must become extraordinary when loved\n    in this god-like manner. To over-reach oneself--that is the cry\n    of the New!... To think or act in any way that will hurt the self\n    becomes impossible then, for the self is truly become the other\n    lover.\n\n    Blindness of passion is far from the nature of things in the new\n    loves. Or rather such passions have been washed and redeemed\n    until they are self-governing. There is all the difference\n    between them and the world idea of passion, as between adoration\n    and infatuation. Deep waters and deep characters hold to\n    their channels. Only shallow and frothy currents are loud and\n    turbulent.... Again it is the three in one. How could one hold a\n    mad destroying passion for one in whom the parent child and master\n    are equally dominant? Always the spirit of tenderness is there like\n    an unseen third. Thus passion has become compassion, and the earth\n    love is seen truly for the first time partaking of the nature of\n    the infinite love which holds the universe together. This is the\n    source of calm, of will-lessness.\n\n    The elder generation, judging all things from the standpoint of\n    the self will, is dumbfounded. Such iron repression among children\n    is beyond its imagination. The elder generation goes on living\n    sharkish and predatory lives, experimenting with repression after\n    too much getting and taking and licentiousness. It concentrates\n    terribly on repression, throwing up about itself temporary\n    breastworks, developing cruel red rays of personal will which\n    at best is but a defiant pugnacity. Its eyes grow red and voice\n    savage. For the time the gargoyles of the ancient self are locked\n    in the lower room, but they are not mastered. All personal will is\n    but a confession of inordination within. Where there is inner order\n    and beauty, it is not needed, becomes indeed an affront to the most\n    high.\n\n    The beautiful will-lessness which marks the relation of the sexes\n    of the New Order is the key to the freedom of the future. Tiger and\n    ape are transformed into white presences--the mutinous slaves of\n    the earth-self become cosmic servants.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n18\n\nSHUK\n\n\nI was talking to a group of young artists in Chicago. There was a boy\nthere who seemed disturbed because the others dared to be natural in\nmy presence, and talk about themselves. I was quite at ease, enjoying\nmyself, and getting altogether as much respect as I deserved.... This\nlad walked with me to the train. I wanted to take him home. I liked his\nvoice and his hand and his mind. I thought at first that he could not\nmean all he said, but I was wrong about that. Reverence is sometimes\nvery hard to take, but the one who brings it has the pure surface of\nreceptivity. The boy said, as my train pulled out:\n\n\"No, I can't come now. There's a month to be spent at home in Michigan,\nand a season's playing with an orchestra up in the lake resorts, but\nafter that--say October, I'll come to Stonestudy.\"\n\nThat was exactly what he did. He had it all planned months ahead. It's\nShuk's[18] way--a mathematical mind, a crystal mind. The theosophists\nwould say that he belonged to the intellectual ray.... We are always\nbetter with Shuk in the room. He comes half way to meet our process\nof lighting up, which is the devotional process; in fact, Shuk\nincorporated himself in our ideals in exchange for a year or two of\nliving the life at Stonestudy.... These things never die.\n\n    [18] Herman S. Schuchert.\n\nA raincoat, a black bag--these are Shuk's possessions, all weight and\nmeasure minimised, even to the kind of white paper which wears best and\npacks best. Shuk means order. A page of his \"copy\" is a rest to the\neye. There is a finished quality to his sentences. My tendency is to\nrush into a mental clean-up when he enters the room. I'm not impressing\nthese details as his virtues. Shuk's virtues are cosmic. He will\npresently be telling the big tales, and telling them fast.\n\nAs a group, we are learning to come and go from each other. We have\nlearned well not to lean--rather to anticipate the Law and leave the\nbeloved when the tendency to cling becomes too keen.... There is a time\nto come and a time to go. I always think of the Master Jesus, leaving\nHis disciples--saying that they would not find the Comforter within, if\nHe remained with them always.\n\nShuk had much to do in bringing home to us this valuable concept.\nWe had a way of thinking the world would come to us on the Lake Erie\nbluff. It would. It did. But we were getting fat and baronial; a bit\nfat of brain, perhaps.... Better than that, the gaunt, lean face\nforever at the window-panes of civilisation.... Comrades are always\ntogether. Big meetings, easy partings. One does not know how close\nhe is to another, until their thoughts spark warm over a lot of\nmileage--the immortality of it all stealing in through the soft airs of\nnight, perhaps.\n\nI teach the young ones to stand alone at every chance. The idea is\nto make them penetrate for themselves, as swiftly as possible, the\nmain tricks and illusions of matter; to make them see past any doubt\nthat to be worldly-minded is to be inferior. Still they must see this\nfor themselves. I formally renounced parentage in the case of the\nLittle Girl. I take all my authority from the younger boys at frequent\nintervals--especially when they have been real mates:\n\n\"Don't advise with me,\" I tell them. \"Show what you know about\nliving.... Do it your way. If you begin to botch it, I'll come in and\nbe a regular parent again, but the idea is to set you loose.\"\n\nThese matters come out naturally in relation to Shuk. He'll be\nsurprised to read this. None of the young ones ever adequately credit\nthe fact that I do a lot of sitting at their feet.... We could see the\nworld as one piece better with Shuk in the room. His intense listening\npulled my eyes constantly. He wanted to know about stories--about\nwriting stories. His presence made us all better workmen because he\nwas so zealous to become one. I had long been absorbed in the romantic\nside of world-politics, but Shuk decorated the subject with a new\nromance.... The farther away a country is, the more we know about it\nfrom a fiction standpoint. His mental forms are very strong. Shuk and\nI have practically covered the same run of thoughts in a morning's\nwork--our machines a mile apart--no prearrangement. But this has worked\nout so often as to cease to be a novelty. The Little Girl's letters\nhave often crossed with mine, carrying the same spiritual unfoldment--a\nfour days' journey distant....\n\nAnother realisation related with Shuk's coming, is that I do not belong\nas the master of a school in the economic sense. There was much detail\nat Stonestudy, much householder's management required. I wouldn't have\ngiven it up, if I had been unable to do that part, but it was a waste\nof force--wretched economy for me to take charge of such affairs. We\nplan to support ourselves, but I cannot run a school, apportion tasks,\nor puzzle devotedly among the meshes of finance. This part of the work\nin California will doubtless be taken care of by those who do it well\nand profitably. There have been moments when I wanted to go among all\nthe schools--happen in, stay an hour or a week--until the children and\nteachers forgot me, so I could find my own among the many.... But again\nit occurs to me that wiser plans than mine are behind it all. Those\nwho are ready, come; numbers will take care of themselves; all we need\nto do is to make the most of the nearest, and keep up our song in such\naccord as we can in the midst of the world's sacrificial madness--many\ngirls' voices now, for the war has plucked the boys....\n\nSome of the things of Shuk's which I chose for this book were about\nthe big war and are not profitable discussions now, but with his paper\nincluded in an earlier chapter, and one or two small things here, his\nquality can be seen. This is a letter to the Old Man:\n\n    ... I haven't ceased to follow the Wars. Big one inside. Tremendous\n    flights, dizzy careenings, impossible falls. Am tramping noisily\n    through the forbidden garden of Books. Am becoming more and more\n    vividly aware of Life, above actuality, beyond sorrow, interior to\n    joy. Vital and thrilling peace to all your endeavours.... Enclosed\n    a paragraph or two on tallying off the world-war within, with the\n    world-war without:\n\n    Evil is stupid mixing of good things into in-harmony. Evil is\n    simply ignorance. Ignorance does not fade away, but must be worked\n    out, worn down. War is evil in this process. Man's higher nature\n    is naturally at war with ignorance, manifesting in his lower\n    nature. If man had always kept at this war against the domination\n    of the lower self, he would never have needed another war to jar\n    and jog him along. But man decided, in ignorance, that he had no\n    cause for war with the lower self. This was his first illusion.\n    The next mistake was natural. Man thought he would get rid of evil\n    by killing off the lower selves of other men. All due to his first\n    error in looking outside instead of in.\n\n    It's all wrong to think we must leave our own houses in order to\n    fight the greatest battles conceivable. If we do not accept the\n    fight within ourselves, we shall certainly have the same fight,\n    once or twice removed, forced upon us....\n\nWhatever portion of humankind is chastened and quickened by this big\nfield-war and sea-war, is the first fruits of a nobler race. Man has\nhad countless and continuous opportunities of doing this purifying\nprocess to himself in privacy and peace; instead, he has consistently,\nwith rarest exceptions, used his will to serve the lesser self, or deal\nwith the lesser selves of other men. Now, in these years, every man who\nfailed, will learn the lesson, because it will be forced upon him. If\nour wisdom is not so great and old as we hope, if we have in the long\npast thrown away our chances, then we shall surely go out and fare as\nthe others fare now--in exactly the right proportion.\n\nKilling another doesn't work as a means of self-correction. Hereafter,\nI'm interested in correcting myself. There is very little outside work\nleft to do. This is a commonplace, of course, yet it reminds me that\nthe highest wisdom is something grandly simple and easy. Murder is an\naggravated waste of both time and opportunity.\n\nYet I am at peace with nobody, not even myself. Peace ought to be more\nintense than war, and until it is, we shall have to go through many\nwars to arrive at any kind of peace. Many slaveries is the price of\nfreedom.\n\nOne who fears will be brought up facing monster fears, until he learns\nnext time that his personal fears were too petty to mention. One who\nhas greed and envy will surely be made a pawn in a game of greed so\ncolossal that perhaps, in a future time, he will have no interest in\nneighbourhood greeds, but will have learned to see and to desire the\nwhole world. His greed has been stretched into a passion for dominion;\nand the most fascinating field for empire he will discover within\nhimself.\n\nSo wherever we stand, we can't lose out. We can choose to do good,\nbetter, best--but without choosing, nothing less than all right can\nhappen.\n\nThe brighter facts are that all these warring energies, whether of\nmen or ordnance, are the force of one God, energies working out of\nthe muddles men made. Man has disturbed the balance. Man now makes a\nsacrifice in order to restore equilibrium, to release the powers he\nmisused.\n\nThe greatest conceivable struggle must sooner or later come between the\nhigher and lower nature of every living thing. Man is now preparing\nhimself, collectively and individually, for this final conquest. His\nprime illusion seized him when he turned away from his own faults, to\ncorrect the faults of his brother. The secondary illusion is that the\nbrother will not be able to care for his own faults. The third is that\nwe must help our brother correct himself. The fourth is that if he\nwon't do it himself, in the way we say, we will do it for him.\n\nThe world (and this means me) is just learning the rudiments of\nwar, just finding out how much vitality man has, how much courage,\nthe stupidity of all fear, the size of the globe, the depth and\npossibilities of the elements, including the human soul; is perceiving\nmore of life and accepting intenser vibrations than ever before on this\nterra. All this knowledge will go into the True Peace some day. But in\nthese nearby years, men are prayerfully eager to get back \"home,\" where\nall these godly lessons may be forgotten.\n\nReal War will positively show man that he must remember what he is\ntaught. When he comes \"home,\" he will enlist immediately in the\ninterior struggle with his lower self. His war with other men will\ntrain him to fight with the greatest enemy on earth, his own ignorance.\n\nI have already enlisted in this big war. My first victory was in\nseizing the fact that the world is me and I am the world and nothing to\nthe contrary. The universe rises and falls with me, subjectively. The\ngoal is to make it--objectively.\n\nI am locked with impatience these days.\n\nAfter that, comes fear.\n\nI may go to the red fields to learn the nonsense about fear. Of course\nI can theorise it now perfectly, and practise it at periods. But I\nwant it steadily, the non-wobbling wisdom. Already I have conquered\nsome fatuousness in myself. Out of my jubilation I write to you....\nOf course, the Many is not a model to follow. The \"Many\" is a picture\nin every man's mind, composed of the inferior things that all other\nmen do.... Inclusion--intensity--love--creativeness--these Stonestudy\nprecepts contain all the story. They are certainly the way out and up\nand over into Life.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nShuk has done a little sketch or two on the big Romance of the new\nsocial order:\n\n    Humour, universality, the highest good will, he writes, are the\n    symbols that flame from the temple of the New Race.... Everywhere\n    appear children of the renovating, re-vitalising, more cosmic\n    tribe. They are easily recognised. The hope of a full and decent\n    future is with them.\n\n    They will do little according to their immediate predecessors, and\n    much by an inner light of their own. Being wise and simple and not\n    destructive, they will gratefully accept all that has proven true\n    for earlier peoples. But they will instinctively have nothing at\n    all to do with the traditions based on three-score-and-ten, or any\n    other of the unfortunately solid viewpoints that frost the world\n    to-day.\n\n    They love the world, have come to claim it whole, to reclaim\n    it from deluded ancestors who were solemnly, from birth, bent\n    upon deeding and selling and stealing and fencing in bits of the\n    planet's surface. Forerunners of this happier race have shown\n    themselves to be masters of materials, true workmen in the solid\n    stuffs; but by their sense of humour they are saved from any\n    impulse to seize and sit upon fragments of earth.\n\n    These new ones are born with an urge towards unity. Their task, to\n    set the world in order. Their means, not so much a rearrangement\n    of objects as a very intense activity along the roads of Beauty\n    and Truth, in a co-operation unstudied and normal with the rest of\n    mankind and with the Igniting Principle.\n\n    It may be observed that Beauty and Truth are too vague to produce\n    effective action in a solid world. This is invariably a saying of\n    the material-minded, however virtuous they may be. It is they who\n    loudly demand a dull utility over and above Beauty, and apart from\n    it. It is they who have agglomerated the chaos that is in this hour\n    threshing about in dust and blood. Their sober iniquities are the\n    fertiliser to force the seed of the New Race.\n\n    It is not a cosmic blunder that the great minds of the world are\n    found in art, including the supreme art of mystic religion--and\n    seldom in the arena of statecraft. The world was never managed from\n    a senate chamber; the cosmos is not guided by a king. When rulers\n    of the past have become great figures, that greatness usually\n    rested upon their gift of poetry, their love of art or wisdom, or\n    some religious quality.\n\n    Poems of twenty words have outlived the might of forty wars. A\n    great book is a higher achievement than a sweeping political move.\n    The dullest changeling with an obsession may set his seal upon a\n    war to the death of ten million men, but in the few lines of a true\n    poem are stored the honey of millenniums of human life. A genuine\n    work of art is more potent and practical than any blood-bought wall\n    of tribal separation, more vital and immediate than the doings of\n    armies. To judge of this properly, one need only know both kings\n    and poets.\n\n    Of the early kings of Rome, it is Numa who is remembered--and he\n    was in harmony with Celestial Order. Of countless other Roman\n    figures, the average mind turns first to C\u00e6sar, who was a literary\n    man, and whose passion to write outlasted every march of his\n    legions. Greece had kings and statesmen and great generals, yet\n    it is her wise men who stand foremost. The conquering Alexander\n    is famed chiefly because he was the unwitting distributor of\n    Grecian beauty. In fact, Greek history began with Homer, the poet,\n    and American history with Columbus, the dreamer who is still our\n    creditor. The mystics of old China reached for the Torch of Light,\n    and they might have attained a true dominion over the planet, had\n    not their fear-inspired kings built a Wall and gelded the Empire\n    once for all. Gautama Buddha gave up kingcraft in order to gain a\n    higher mastery. Mohammed lived on the Road. Jesus the Christ set\n    free an energy in the world that is only gaining its real momentum\n    after two thousand years--and he firmly refused a material crown.\n\n... A hopeful dream, the poem of an autumn afternoon, the building of a\nsphinx or a pyramid--these are not subject to time or conditions. They\nremain.\n\nSo the Children who are the hope of the world are not dismayed at the\nmedley of illusions emanating from the so-called ruling class. Emperors\nand premiers do not get very much done either way; they themselves\nabandon their own works over night. They are deserving of profound\nsympathy. They only spread out more manful chaos to be set straight by\nthe master craftsmen--the artists, humorists, vitalists, mystics....\nBeauty is the sun-bright flash of the Infinite.\n\nWith duty raised to a joy, and pain forgot, the Singers come, the\nBuilders, the Quickeners of man. The Unforgettables of the so-called\npast were of this stock. Their leisure is deep--of a sort that sustains\nthe finitudes.\n\nAll the good goals of yesterday are to be counted as mile-posts.\nDirection is more important than any imaginable goal; unvarying\ntendency is more direct and splendid than any creed; the white path of\nthe quester is more precious than a stationary heaven.\n\nThe modern children cannot stop on this side of the horizon because\nthey are creators. Life is their religion. Their rites are broad and\ndeep as man, as ancient and reverent as time, as new as dawn.\n\nThey do not reject the Vedas. They re-fashion the Upanishads in their\nown hearts. They study the travels and hopes of Jesus, listen for\nthe divine songs of Orpheus, penetrate the glitter of numbers with\nPythagoras, find satisfaction in the Mohammedan thinkers who connected\nAristotle with Moses. These names do not belong to the past. The\nmany Buddhas are perpetually modern. Kabir lives to-day in Tagore.\nHeracleitus and Plato are still living springs.\n\nIn just the same sense, the children of the New Race are old as\nthe Pelasgian Zeus, though in point of time they are here for work\nand play in 1920. But their vitality, reality, beauty, power and\nachievement--these are affairs of all time.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n19\n\nIMAGINATION\n\n\nMany mystics have lost touch entirely with the deep sunken abutments of\nthe spiritual edifice--the footings in matter. They are deeply wise in\nthe mysteries and unfoldments of contemplation, but lose their way like\nmindless lambs in the world. We idealise a practical mysticism which\ndares to walk the earth in the heat of the day, dares to contemplate\nthe stars as outposts of the heavenly kingdom, launching the vision at\nlast, not only to the Holy City, but to the Throne of Itself....\n\nTalks with Shuk at Stonestudy had a tendency to make us see the big\nUnseen politics and diplomacies and rulerships of the planet. Here are\na few paragraphs from one of his letters which show the quality:\n\n     ... Kings and presidents are the most hampered of men. Great\n    generals are silly without their armies. To remove externals\n    from us, to rid our minds of the illusive and the inessential,\n    is simply to clear us for action. Even a gunner, in taking aim,\n    regards the object or enemy as an abstraction, and focuses his\n    whole attention upon his own instrument, his sights. If he\n    actually looks at the enemy, he will not hit him. The billiardist\n    first glances over the entire table, then, to make a true shot,\n    concentrates his full attention upon the tip of his own cue.\n    Perhaps the great leader of armies does not regard individuals or\n    see them as men, but as extensions of his own body, and in time of\n    stress, he has forgotten them completely save as abstract power\n    for his use, and that use he determines interiorly. Even the most\n    material-minded of men, in the crux of worldly and four-square\n    events, sinks into deep and effective cerebration. Can we, who\n    realise this as a conscious and direct principle, do any less?\n\n    I think the Guardians are sitting together a little way off,\n    watching with grand interest, to see just how much of a mess\n    mankind can make. Man is always given lavish supplies with which to\n    create works of art that may prove equal in beauty and wonder to\n    the universe itself. Man does not yet see art in these materials.\n\n    He must open his eyes before the Powers are able to help him. The\n    Guardians cannot operate against man's will, because their will and\n    his will, including yours and mine right now, are of one piece.\n    The will of the Guardians is better trained and cleaner, because\n    more experienced.... When men cease to shout for different things\n    from the same Father, they stand a chance of getting the Father's\n    attention.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have had many astonishing hours in Chapel talking about these\n\"Guardians,\" the arrangements above, as below, one Plan governing all.\nWe do not care to bandy about the name of God a great deal, for we\nrealise that He is most unseen when embodied in matter; that He is apt\nto be far from the mind that makes familiar with Him in words. Yet all\nstands for Him, all reveals Him. The farther we can see beyond mere\neyesight, the more we realise that He is _not_ standing exactly in\nperson, just outside of the boundaries of matter.\n\nThere are hierarchies, so to speak. There are messengers and couriers\nand charioteers, saints, pilgrims, angels, courtiers, priests and\npoliticians, grades and authorities represented there, such as we find\nin Matter and Romance here.... Shuk and Steve and I used to hypothecate\nthe existence of a White Council back of all the religious movements of\nthe world. By humour and analogy and romantic speculation, we arrived\nat the point of view that the world religions are one at the top, and\nthat initiates, illuminati, masters are stationed at intervals to help\nhumanity up the slopes. We conceived the White Council as a centre of\nwisdom love and power, holding up the cup continually for revelation,\nguiding and guarding humanity's soul. We glimpsed the fact that the\nleaders of the White Council might be beyond embodiment--at least in\navoirdupois--the holy of all holy men. Only a most pure and potent\nmessenger, we thought, would be permitted to reach this Inner Temple,\nthis Shamballah, compared to which the Vatican is a salon open to the\npublic and the monasteries of Thibet a concourse for pilgrims.\n\nAfter religion, we realised that there must be an upper centre for\nall that is represented here below so diversely in politics and\nnationalism. It couldn't be God Himself back of the dumas and senates,\nreichstags, diets and parliaments. One does not pass from elevator-boy\nto editor in chief in a great commercial office. If there were a White\nCouncil back of all the religious movements of the world, there must\nbe a Big Mill back of all world-politics--a gathering of directors,\nventuring to judge the problems of men because they had risen above\nthem.... These men could want nothing material. We perceived them\nbehind armies and thrones, manipulating kings and diplomats and secret\ncentres, in ways that even the closest agents did not understand.\n\nWe concluded there must be another centre made up of the\nmaster-artists, bringing through into matter (as the world can stand\nit and as the little human instruments reach up for them), the great\ndelivering beauties of song and story, paint and verse and tale. And\nthis we called the Shop Itself. Sometimes we fancied that it was all\ntoo much, even to dream of going there sometime to see the forms, the\nmarbles, the canvases, the manuscripts--the Artists themselves.... And\nthen we realised that, just as all the arts and all the religions and\nall the political movements were one at the top, that Politics and Art\nand Religion were one at the next eminence; that the Inner Council and\nthe Big Mill and the Shop Itself were one at the top, just as Wisdom,\nLove and Power are; as Goodness, Beauty and Truth are; as Father, Son\nand Holy Spirit are--three in one at the Top, and that was Himself....\n\nAnd then we would rise from Chapel and go out and look at the\nlake--Steve and Shuk and I.\n\nFinally one day we were told that we had done some right good\ndreaming--that it was all true. We were advised that it was no affair\nof ours if other people didn't get it right away; that they would get\nit.... So we began to put these things in stories. They mean Romance\nto us. Queerly enough the stories are coming through--one long one\nespecially, called _Archer_, that shows the downhere activities of the\nBig Mill and the White Council and the Shop Itself.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have said it often in this book--that our culture consists of the\nquantity of properties that we have tallied off--the within with the\nwithout. The Kingdom is within, also the King; the Sky and the Nest are\none; one are the heavens and the homing heart that finds its peace in\nthe deep vales where the adorable humanities come to be. The inmost and\nthe uppermost are one.\n\nWe are where the torch of consciousness is.\n\nWe are in the body, or in the mind, or in the soul; we are in time\nor eternity, or we pass back and forth.... First we tally off the\nfar outposts of the kingdoms without and within; first we are mere\nsentries learning to become clear-eyed and brave to stand alone--almost\noutsiders, having scarcely heard of the Kingdom, dimly conscious, but\nlearning to become steady-eyed. Then we are called in a little--called\nin to become couriers on foot, running to and from among the outer\nprovinces of the kingdom; then messengers to the Middle Countries; then\nCharioteers to the gates of the City; then ministers to the court of\nthe King....\n\nThe day comes at last when we have audience with Him--when we rule\nwith Him, when we become united with Him. From the throne Itself, then\nwe perceive the outsiders, the sentries, the couriers, messengers,\ncharioteers, the winged riders and the deep-down men of the\ndungeons.... With the fine tranquillity of power, we measure forth to\nall, reverence, justice and grace.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n20\n\nBOYS AND DOGS\n\n\nChildren of the new social order love strange creatures; they are\npassionate about the care and protection of animals, but until they are\nmade to suffer, they are apt to be sceptical about the infallibility\nof their elders. They are usually forced into silence early. I have\nnoted that their ideas are intrinsically at variance with parental\nideas--about purity, sunlight, dancing, foods, religion, odours....\nIt takes a good man to break a horse or a dog. In a sense _break_ is\nthe word, although I would accomplish it with enchantment rather than\na gad.... This is invariable: \"When the pupil is ready--the Master\nappears----\" an old occult saying, and another: \"The first thing the\nMaster does, is to break the back of his disciple----\"\n\nStiffness of opinion, rigidity of holding to that which one has,\npreconception, deep-rutted habits of mind--all these are fatal to that\nswift and splendid growth of the disciple when he first finds his\nteacher. For days the child is in a bewildering series of changes--made\nover new each fortnight--reviewing lives of experience--razing the\nold structures to the very footings for new temples of mind and soul.\nThe child must be ready to give himself--must give himself utterly.\nThe essential reverence is first required; the self is broken for all\nbirths; one gives one's self to gain all. I would not try to quicken\na child who doubted what I was saying; and yet I have never sought to\nmake myself unerring or infallible. I like to have the young ones make\nhumour of my frailties, and at the same time believe there is something\npriceless in our better moments together. There is no possibility of\nfront or acting.\n\nI seek to make them practise the presence of the Divine in themselves.\nI tell them never to do anything alone that they would not do before\nme. I take away all sense of sin from them. I sometimes congratulate\nthem on being especially close to us, because of mistakes. I seek to\nset them free in all their ways, stripping the last attraction from\nevil, jockeying them higher from a humorous and artistic point of view.\nI show them the banality of many popular and obvious evils, the dulness\nof paying the price for something _off_ form and of questionable taste.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is a lot of humour and nobility about a good dog and a good boy\ntogether. John has been sleeping for a few nights in a bit of a cabin\nwith an open door. He picked up a friend down on the beach somewhere,\nthe same that he described as \"World Man Dog\" in one of his letters.\nI liked the tone of his voice as he talked with this old loafer named\nSeaweed.... One evening I was sitting on the hill above the cabin,\nso still that even a bird would have mistaken me for a part of the\nlandscape.\n\nWorld Man Dog came up the cabin grade. His head was down--thinking. His\ntail was straight out behind him, as a dog's tail is when very much\nengaged with his own thoughts. You could see that he was going to keep\nan appointment; it was evident that he was afraid he might be late. He\ndid not see me, so completely was he engrossed in his own affairs. He\nwent right on up to John's door, entered, gave a look round the shack,\nfirst eagerly, then to make sure. His face fell, his body sagged--down\nhe slumped in the middle of the floor--utterly dejected. As plain as\nday:\n\n\"Hell,--he ain't here!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA real dog trainer is a wise man. I used to raise collies and was\naround the benches some--watching the champions come and go. One old\ntrainer talked to me:\n\n\"Styles change in dogs,\" he said, \"but a good dog doesn't change. He\ngoes on and on. You don't get the good collies here on the benches any\nmore. This year they want the collie so fine that we have to pinch the\nbrain out of his head and break his lung-room in two. Last year we bred\nfor hair, not for body and brain. Look at that one----\"\n\nHe pointed to an old sire that had three seasons of the bench and\nblue, a sweeper of prizes. I remember the time when such a head would\nhave started a stealer anywhere. The old collie had not lost form,\nbut styles had changed. A most stupid dog with a straight, narrow\nhead had won--not the shepherd type at all, but the head of a Russian\nwolf-hound--a bit of the monster left in it, a drugged look in the\nsmall black eyes; hysteria there, and not fealty--madness and not soul.\n\n\"We breed them for the cities now--for porches and parlours,\" the\ntrainer added. \"Yes, those great collie strains that we have been\nnurturing for centuries to all that is brave and hard and useful--we\nare putting the hair of the lap-dog on them now--long silky stuff, not\nfor snow and sleet. The collie walks by himself these days. No, we\nwon't altogether ruin the strain. Many individuals are spoiled, but the\nrace had come too far and too long to be broken down by a few years of\nfancyfying.\"\n\nOf course, I was thinking of the children at every stage of the\ntalk--of city people and children. As a race, the city-bred have become\ntoo fine. Life has worn them thin--given them the drugged look about\nthe eyes. The race will never get far in the art of living until it\ncomes home to the land and the restful distances and free flowing airs.\nThis is so true that it seems to risk wearing the eye and the mind--to\nsay it again....\n\nIt's good to see them--a boy and a dog together in the hills or down\nby the edges of the land. There was a piece of decent collie in a\ndog named Jack back on the lake shore. He was long in strength and\ncourage, but a bit shy in obedience. As a work-dog, he was ruined by\na man who knew less than he did, frequently the case in bringing up\ndogs and men--whipped at the wrong time, every forming endeavour in\nthe pup-brain broken by that. He is seven or eight years old now ...\na clean dog, a very wise and kind dog, with a sly and quiet humour\nthat seldom is cruel and never falls into horse play--a lover of many\nchildren and confident of an open door in many homes.\n\nI remember the dignity and beauty of his first appearance over the\nbank from the shore, almost timed to our arrival. We were tender to\nthe collie in general, having passed years with them. Jack moved from\none to another accepting embraces with a kindliness that mellowed\nthat cloudy day. There was joy about it all. I stood back waiting my\nturn with much self-control. He submitted to the welcome--to the last\ndetail, and a little later refused refreshments with perfect courtesy.\n\nWhen we came back the second summer, we found that a bullet had broken\nJack's right front leg. He had wintered out at times, had known much\npain. It was not that he did not have good friends who would have taken\nhim in, but I think Jack lost faith a bit in the pain and stress. There\nwas grey about his muzzle. One day he sat in the centre of the little\nChapel class.\n\n\"I'd like to be as good a man as Jack is a dog,\" one of the boys said.\n\n\"You'd be one more man,\" said another.\n\nThe fact is Jack has filled his circle rather well. This thought came\nto me presently with fuller meaning. I regarded him with knowledge of\nthree seasons. A clean dog, a gentleman, a master of himself, very\ncourageous and slow to anger, impossible for small children to anger--a\ndog among dogs, but more than dog among men.\n\n\"He _has_ filled his circle,\" I said aloud. \"What makes a man look less\nin these very virtues that Jack has mastered, is that a man's circle\nis larger, and he has not reached the time of fulfilment as Jack has.\nIf the dog's accomplishments were suddenly lifted from his circle\nand placed in a larger one, we would not be conscious of the fine\nintegration of virtues that keep us interested now.\"\n\nMen, lost in the complications of cities, yearn for the simplicity of\ntheir early days on the farms; and yet they could not go back. The\nsimplicity they yearn for is ahead. That of the old country days is but\na symbol of the cosmic simplicity in store for us. Tolstoi turned back\nto the peasants, yet the simplicity he craved was not there.\n\nThe peasants are merely potential of what the New Race will be; the\npeasants themselves must suffer the transition--must have their circle\nwidened and feel their little laws and their little sense of order\nsuddenly diffused over broad, strange surfaces. Their cosmic simplicity\nwill appear when the larger dimension is put in order. That which is\nlovely in any plane of being, is that which is in flower--when it\nhas about filled its present circle. We are not less, intrinsically,\nbecause our values are placed in a larger vessel, though we have a\nrenovating sense of our own insignificance. There is an order of small\nmen, so obviously a part of their very narrowness, that it becomes\ninstantly repulsive to larger souls. Many of the latter have flashed\noff to the end of their tether for the time, preferring chaos, to the\ntwo by two neatness of small-templed men.\n\nA secret of growth lies in these observations. We fill a certain\ncircle, restoring a kind of order in the chaos; and then the circle is\nsuddenly widened and that which was our order and mastery is loose and\ndiffused within the larger orbit. Herein are the pangs of transition.\nWe lose our way for the time in the vaster area, like a man who is\nunfamiliar with an estate just purchased. There is but one thing to\ndo--to begin to work upon the new dimension. As we work, courage and\npatience steal in. Presently comes the vision of the completed circle.\nWhen this comes, our labour is pinned to a fresh ideal, and we are safe.\n\nIn a hundred ways I have found it true that the vision comes in the\nlabouring hours. One may move for weeks about his new estate (or\nmanuscript), planning this and that, but the glimpse of the cohering\nwhole is denied him, until he has actually begun upon the nearest or\nmost pressing task. This is the miraculous benefit of action again. In\ngiving ourselves forth in action, the replenishment comes. The sense of\nself ceases to clutter the faculties as we bend and toil.\n\nThe days that are added to our experience each bring this story in a\ndifferent way: that the sense of self impedes reality on every hand;\nthat the loss of the sense of self in labour and service renders us\ninstantly quick to the animations of the spirit, without which at least\nfrom time to time, a man belongs to the herd, and is lost, like all\ngregarious creatures, in the will of his superiors.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n21\n\nTHE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE\n\n\nThere is a man here who has found peace. I made a pilgrimage to his\nhouse. A boy from the village went with me part of the way up the\nmountain. The Pacific was presently visible upon the right hand, and a\nspacious verdant valley on the left. I lingered a moment on the trail,\nrejoicing in the quiet splendour, and then noticed a vine-clad hut\nstill farther up the slope.\n\n\"That's Mr. Dreve's cabin,\" the boy said.\n\nI learned from him that this man Dreve was well-loved in the village\nand in the big city beyond; that he was a very different man now\nfrom the one who had come here a few years ago; that he was torn and\nmaddened then, cursing God, but too stubborn to kill himself.\n\n\"What helped him?\" said I, because the boy had paused.\n\n\"Well, it wasn't the climate,\" he answered.\n\nI saw he was wondering if I were worth risking the truth upon.\n\n\"Did he fight it out with himself?\" I asked carelessly.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the boy, and I now met a fine straight pair of eyes....\n\nThere was an old sharp wedge to the story. Dreve's sweetheart had\ndied--the loss twisting him to the point almost of insanity. He had\nclimbed this mountain, it was said, and remained for three days, until\nthe town began to search. The marshal had found him sitting up there,\nwhere the shack is now. Dreve was quiet and normal, but confessed\nhimself hungry. He had returned to the mountain soon afterward, and\nbuilt his cabin. In six months, Dreve was all changed over. He seemed\nto have a new body and new mind.\n\n\"You said he's here four days a week,\" I suggested.\n\n\"Yes, he goes to the city. He has a good business, but has mastered it\nto the point that several younger men can run it. Dreve only gives two\nor three days a week to business affairs, though he has been a great\nworker----\"\n\n\"He's up there now?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Does he mind strangers?\"\n\n\"Not your kind.\"\n\nI thanked him, and added, \"Tell me--he means a lot to you, doesn't he?\"\n\n\"All a man could,\" said the boy. \"I'm going back now.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nDreve was middle-aged, clean-shaven, deep-eyed. Time had been driven\nto truce in his case. His face showed many battles, but when he spoke,\na kind of new day dawned and you looked into the face of a boy. I\nremained with him three days. We talked of the new magic in the\ntraining of children. We talked of the New Age and the great song of\njoy and peace that would break across the world when troops turned home.\n\nDreve had _something_. He seemed to breathe something out of the air\nthat other men's lungs aren't trained for. He seemed to have _within_\neverything necessary for a human being, including vision and humour and\na firm grasp of the world. He was at peace about God and the world;\nat peace also about death. Slowly it dawned upon me that this man had\nwalked arm in arm with life to the last abyss, and that life had been\nforced to confess that she had nothing worse to offer, whereupon the\ntwo had become fast friends.\n\nWhen a man can sit tight and lose everything he formerly wanted in the\nsense of world possessions; when he has winnowed the last shams out\nof the things called _fame_ and _convention_ and _society_; when he\nhas lost the woman who means all the world to him, and still loves her\nmemory and her soul better than the living presence of any other woman;\nwhen he has come to realise that death contains everything he wants,\nyet is content to wait for it--the idea of hell becomes a boyish thing\nto be put away, and Lucifer returns to his old place as a Son of the\nMorning.\n\nWe stood together in the noon sun. Dreve did not even wear a hat.\n\n\"I came here in great shadow and could not bear the light,\" he said.\n\"But one day I found my heart lifting a little as the sun came out.\nThen I found that it was really true--that sunlight helped me. The more\nI thought about it, the more I needed it; the more I loved it, the more\nits particular excellence for me unfolded. Take anything to the light,\nand it ceases to be formidable. Sickness is a confession. The time\nis at hand when schools will teach that. Sickness is a confession of\nignorance which is a lack of light. If one is weak he cannot stand the\nlight. Transplanted things must be protected from the light. St. Paul\non the road to Damascus did not have enough inner light to endure the\ngreat flash from without. Light works upon evil like quicklime--that's\nwhy sunlight hurts the sick ones. It is also hostile to the utterly\nstupid idea of what clothing is for--clothing that thwarts and\nstrangles every circulatory process of the flesh. There's nothing the\nmatter with sunlight----\"\n\nThe sun had not only redeemed the physical shadows of Dreve's life, but\nsymbolised the spiritual light which had come to him with the calm and\npower of the greater noon-day. He did not speak in exact statements of\nthe one who was gone, but that romance, too, was like light about his\nhead. I thought of the wonderful thing that Beatrice said which helped\nto heal the forlorn heart of her great lover:\n\n\"I will make you forever, with me, a citizen of that Rome whereof\nChrist is a Roman----\"\n\nAnd I thought of the Blessed Damosel leaning over the barrier of\nheaven with sweet and immortal messages for him who waited below in\nthe very core of earth's agony. In passing, the great lovewomen bridge\nthe Unseen for their lovers, who in their turn give to the world the\nmighty documents of the human heart. In passing, this woman had become\neverything to Dreve, so that I, a stranger, felt that he was not alone\nbut twice-powered. All his life was a prayer to her. He brought to her\nspirit now the greatest gift that man can bring to his mate--the love\nof the world through her heart.\n\nWe had walked down to the ocean. Many young people were bathing in the\nsurf or playing on the strand. It was the presence of Dreve perhaps,\nbut I confess that human beings never before looked so wonderful to\nme--a fearlessness and candour and beauty about the moving groups that\nwas like a vision of the future. All smallness of self was smoothed\naway in the grand harmony of sun and sand and sea.\n\n\"It's a kind of challenge to a war-stricken world, isn't it?\" he asked\nquietly. \"Aren't they splendid together--the big boys and girls of\nCalifornia?... Don't misunderstand me. I know the world. I'm not lost\nin dreams. I know well the darkness of the world. But there are great\nones among the boys and girls playing together here. All are on the\nroad, but the great ones of the Reconstruction are already here in the\nworld--playing.\n\n\"Great ones play,\" he repeated. \"First we are labourers, then artisans,\nthen artists, then workers--at last we learn to play. That means that\nwe dare to be ourselves, wherein lies our real value to others--when we\ndare to become as little children.... Hear them laugh.... You wouldn't\nthink this was the saddest little planet in the universe.... Look at\nthat tall young pair of sunburnt giants! She's a Diana, conquesting\nagain. Look at the wonder in his eyes! Perhaps it is just dawning upon\nhim that the man who walks with this girl must walk to God.\n\n\"... Oh, yes, I know,\" he added laughingly, \"there is flippancy and a\ntouch of the uncouth here and there--but we have all played clumsily at\nfirst.\"\n\nI continually marvelled at Dreve's remarkable health. His stride up the\nmountain-side was actually buoyant.\n\n\"Did you ever feel that you could live as long as you pleased?\" he\nasked.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I think one does not learn this until after one has wanted to die.\nOne must live above the body and not in it--in order to make it serve\nindefinitely--quite the same as you would climb above a street to watch\na parade go by.\"\n\nI put that thought away for contemplation, knowing that it belonged to\na certain mystery of Dreve's regeneration.\n\n\"You know,\" he added, \"one has to get very tired to want to die. Those\nyoung people down on the shore--they want to live. They are not tired.\nThey want to cross all the rivers. They mean to miss nothing down here.\nThey can't see through it all. It challenges them. But the time comes\nwhen everything on earth seems to betray. Then you have to turn to the\nUnseen for the big gamble. The world is learning it rapidly to-day.\nLook----\"\n\nWe had reached his hill-cabin.\n\nHe turned from the sea to the valley. Night was falling. There was a\nbig moss-rose plant that smelled like a harvest apple, and filled all\nthe slope with sweet dry fragrance. There was a constancy about it,\nand the great sun-shot hill was blessed with the light and creativeness\nof the long day. It was like the song of finished labour from a\npeasant's heart.... One forgot the world, the war, forgot that the holy\nheart of humanity was in intolerable travail.... The valley that Dreve\nnow pointed to was like an English pastorale. It had the look of age\nand long sweet establishment in the dusk. My friend was quick to catch\nthe thought in my mind.\n\n\"... It is like England,\" he said. \"There was a development of\ndetail in English country-life as nowhere else. I think of cherries\nand cattle, of strawberries with clotted cream, of sheep-dogs and\nsheep-tended downs and lawns, of authoritative cookery, natural service\nand Elizabethan inns.... Everything was regular and comfortable. One\nforgot to-morrow and yesterday in England before the war. I heard a\ndog-trainer, speaking of a pup, say, 'He's a fine indiwidual, but his\nbreeding isn't exactly reglar.' ... With a rush it came to me that\nnothing in the world is regular now. England isn't a soothing pastorale\nany more--everything changed, demoralised--but only for the present.\"\n\nThe dusk was stealing down from the far ridges. Our eyes were lost\nin the California valley which seemed to be growing deeper in the\nthickness of night. Almost as Dreve spoke, I expected to hear vesper\nbells from some Kentish village. His low voice finished the picture:\n\n\"Country roads and sheep upon the lawns, vine-finished stone-work,\ndoves in the towers and under the eaves, evening bells and honest\ngoods.... I think of the ships going forth from England, boys from\nthe inland countries answering the call of the sea and finding their\nfore-and-afters and men-of-war in Plymouth or Bristol.... You know\nit is the things that make the romance of a country that endure? All\nthese will come again. All the good and perfect things of the spirit\nof old England will come again.... Our hearts burn within to think of\nthe yearning in the world for a peaceful valley like this.... Think, if\nI could take your hand now and watch the sun go down upon a peaceful\nworld ... hear the cattle coming home and sheep in the perfumed mist of\nevening ... doves under the eaves and the sleepy voices of children....\nI think Europe would fall to screaming and tears, and then lose its\nmadness for strife--if the big picture of our valley at evening were\nplaced before the battle-lines as we see it now.\"\n\nDreve stared a moment longer. I fancied I saw a bone-white line under\nthe tan, running from chin to jaw.\n\n\"A woman was leaving her lover,\" he added. \"It had to be so. Each knew\nthat. Just as she was going, the woman said, 'I forget--I forget why I\nhave to go away.' ... It would be that way with the soldiers, if they\ncould look down upon their own valleys and farms. They would forget war\nand hurry down, saying, 'I'm coming!'\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI wanted to get closer to Dreve's secret of peace and power. I wanted\nto tell it. Apparently Dreve wanted me to. Now, there's a price to pay\nfor these big things, but many are willing to pay the price if the way\nis clear. Dreve had suffered all he could; then something had turned\nwithin him, and he found himself in Day again instead of Death.\n\n\"It must be told differently,\" he began. \"For instance, if I should\ntell you that the way is to love your neighbour as yourself, you\nwouldn't have anything. Whitman said, 'Happiness is the efflux of\nsoul,' which is exactly true, but it didn't help me until I had\nexperience. Happiness is the loss of the sense of self. You can see\nthat clearly. All pleasure-seeking is to forget self. We loosen\nsomething inside that sets us free for a moment, and we say we've had a\ngood time.\n\n\"There are great powers within. The greater the man, the more he uses\nthis fact. We thought of steam as a finished power until the big\nstraight-line force of electricity was released. We can't explain it,\nbut we have touched certain of the laws which it obeys. The materialist\nis inclined, as ever, to say that electricity is the last force to be\nuncorked on the planet, just as he said that the kerosene lamp was the\nlast word in illumination. The occultist declares that there are still\nhigher and hotter forces, touching Light itself, and indulging in the\nlaughter of curves and decoration where the cold monster electricity\nmoves only in straight lines.\n\n\"Men have died to tell the story that happiness is radiation, not\nreflection--that we have it all inside, if we could only turn it\nloose--that all pain and fear and anger and self-illusion disappear the\ninstant we enter the larger dimension of life, exactly as the moon goes\nout of sight in the presence of the incandescent sun.\n\n\"I was emptied of all that life meant in the world--but something new\nflooded in. I saw that all was not lost, but that all was greater than\nI could dream; that all was waiting for fuller and finer expression.\nI saw that what I could do for you, or for any man or woman or child,\nbrought me a living force of the love I was dying for. It became clear\nthat I needed only to clear away the choking evil of self, in order to\nfeel that I was a part of the tender and mighty Plan,--to touch the\nrhythm of the Source, from which all songs and heroisms and martyrdoms\ncome.\n\n\"It has all been said again and again. There comes a moment usually\nafter much pain when the human mind realises that it is invincible when\nworking with the Plan; that it may even merge with a kind of Divine\nPotency yet retain itself; that it can actually perform its actions\nwith the help of that mighty fluid energy in which the stars are swung\nand the avatars are born.\n\n\"A cold monster indeed is this electricity compared to the odic force,\nthe dynamo of which is the human will. But the magic of it all lies in\nthe reverse of the whole system of use. This force destroys when used\nfor self, but constructs when it is turned outward. Here we touch the\nlaw again that happiness is in radiation--in the loss of the sense of\nself--in incandescence--\"\n\nDreve smiled at me with sudden revealing charm. \"I would say that it\nwas all in loving one's neighbour,\" he added, \"except that it has been\nsaid so much.... It is true. You seemed to know it to-day on the shore.\nYou seemed to see the great ones passing there. If the world could only\nknow the joy of seeing the sons of God in the eyes of passing men!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNight had come. We sat at the doorway of his cabin, a waver of\nfirelight within, stars clearing above the misty sea.\n\n\"It's all play when one gets into the Plan--all pain while one resists\nthe Plan,\" Dreve added slowly. \"I used to think that I had a strong\nwill; that I had good will-force, as men go. It was the will of an\ninvalid child. If men could only know the force that is theirs to use\nwhen they enter the Stream! One is asked to give up old habits and ways\nand propensities--but only because they are harmful and impeding. All\nwhich really belongs is merely obscured for the time. It returns to you\nwith fresh loveliness and power. One does not give up three-space to\nunderstand four-space. The truth is he must rise above the former to\nsee it all.\n\n\"It isn't you and I who matter,\" he said abruptly, after a pause.\n\"These things are for all. I know what comes afterward--to a man or to\na nation--when driven to the last ditch of pain. A new dimension of\npower comes. That's what happens. That's what the New Age is all about.\nThat's what the war means. We shall learn our new chastity. We shall\nemerge as a race into a more serene and splendid consciousness.... The\nprice--the dead.... I could tell you something about that. One must\nhave prayed for death to know about that. Don't think of that now--only\ntake it from me, or from your own soul, that the big Plan is all\nright--that _They_ haven't made any mistakes yet--that the loved one is\nonly away for a time--busy--quite right--about the Father's business.\nAnother time for that.\n\n\"I can't forget them down on the Shore,\" Dreve finished. \"That was\nplay. It was all a laugh down there. The big forces and the big people\nare always a part of laughter. The laugh will take you to the throne.\nThe Gods laugh.... There's a laugh that ends pain. There's a laugh that\nchallenges power. There is the laugh of the aroused lover in the world.\nWe shall hear the laugh of the world itself, when the big revelation\nbreaks upon us all that the Plan is good--that the Plan is for joy.\"\n\n\n\n\n22\n\nA DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER\n\n\nI think we come through at birth with certain sealed orders to be\nopened at distant points of the journey.... Ten years ago, as I lay one\nnight, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the light--my eyes found\nthese lines:\n\n  _\"Listen, I will be honest with you:\n  I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.\n\n  These are the days that must happen to you:\n  You shall not heap up what is called riches;\n\n  You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;\n\n  You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd--you hardly\n  settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an\n  irresistible call to depart;\n\n  You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who\n  remain behind you;\n\n  What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with\n  passionate kisses of parting;\n\n  You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands\n  toward you....\n\n  'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'\"_\n\nThe thing had come around by India--a quotation from Walt, in a\nlittle Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night.\nI resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile\npatiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should\nhave to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was\na page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after\nclearance--opened far out on the white water.\n\nThey used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out\nof them.... Romance means _Not to stay_.... Bit by bit, the story\nunfolds that the Plan is good--that the Plan is unutterably good, that\none needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are\nGod's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the\nworld, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until\nthe petty things of life, in _no_ arrangements or combinations, can\nhold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all.\n\nOne must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The\nmen who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in\nthe labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself\nto them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay--don't\nstay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I\nassure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as\na laughing discussion of death in one's own mind--the next step of\nthe cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there--not to take our\nmortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects--by\nno means to take our card-indexes and letter files--to travel light,\nto pick up the brighter shells by the way--every glimpse ahead showing\nhigher light--a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry\nour furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper\ntropics?... To become as little children--to be open hearted and free\nhanded--to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent\nseparateness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the\nlight and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do\nthat if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly\nto recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs.\n\nWeigh up your external possessions--weigh them carefully--for their\namount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God....\n\nTo become as a little child--to know that the forests are filled with\nother than things to eat--to love the mysteries awake, to love the\nfairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings--to be fearless\nand free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as\nit comes:\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull for _High\nFlight_. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it\nmust be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait--that is the old song\nof Earth--young waiting--big waiting--holy waiting. _I love it._ I love\nthe suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I\nam loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music.\n\nLast night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together--touched\ngreat white things--talked and laughed and loved until long after\nthree. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has\neverything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait,\nopenarmed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel--and in others. I\ndream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be\nbursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm so _glad_\nthis morning!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe children learn it so easily. I like to stop in this book and\nlet them say it--the big story of the Seamless Robe, the story of\nDemocracy. The young men say it strongly; and tenderly the young\nwomen,--the dream of the mate in their hearts becoming the dream of\nthe Master. They all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and\nlives--the little boys coming in with their tales of prairie and the\ndeeps; literally it is here out of the mouths of babes.... Dreve found\nit in a woman, another in science, another in music, another in the\nopen road. Every man is his own way, his own truth and life. It waits\nfor all.... We keep fanning day and night, many of us who work at\nhome--the fanners of the Hive! We cool and harden the great spiritual\nconcept into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear and harden\nin flaky white under the masses of the bees....\n\nI laugh at my own intensity.... It is our one tale, told in essay and\nstory, in different terms for cults and schools, for soldiers and\nclergy, in verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but here it runs\nbest out of the mouths of babes ... helping the Big Democrat get his\nstory through.... The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's:\n\n\nTHE SOUL SPEAKS.\n\nI walked through a field. The brown soil was upturned and all the\nrichness of man's labour was in it.... The morning sun was lifting a\ngrey veil of dew up to its heart; the earth was fresh and cool where\nit had rested. My feet were bare and sank into the soft richness. The\nfield was wide and pure and fragrant and alive. It seemed to sing as\nthe sun grew warm upon it. Ecstatic birds flew close and balanced\nthemselves magically in the sparkling air.\n\nI happened to be just ready to receive the golden loveliness that the\nold Mother is always eager to give, that morning. She helped me to feel\nthe goodness of all things--the power and beauty of all, and the great,\ngiving spirit.... Inside I felt keenly the presence of Soul--that was\nthe secret. Soul awakened and breathing, Soul waiting and eager, Soul,\nthe holy quickener.... The heart beat peacefully, the brain hushed all\nunnecessary thought and listened. I lay down upon the sweet ground\nthere--the body relaxed and forgotten.\n\nThen, from the depths within, I heard the sound of the Soul's voice\nspeaking these words:\n\n\"This is the appointed time. Long enough have I sat mute and silent in\nthe darkness. We have learned the lesson. The circle of separateness\nis complete. We are ready to enter a new globe now, a globe much\nlarger than the one we have known, much more wonderful. In it there\nare greater tests than we ever had before. But the new tests, instead\nof being painful, are joyous; not separateness is ahead, but union,\noneness in all things.... Long have you gone your way alone, down the\nroad of deafness and blind eyes and pain; and not the way I would\nhave led you, though perfectly right, for it was an education. The\nblindness and darkness of it has taught us what _not_ to do, therefore\nwe know the path.... Ours were not object lessons; always we have\nlearned through opposites.... To learn the great lesson of listening,\nwe talked much. We told others of the paths they should take long\nbefore we thought of following our own. We hated all things, to learn\nhow to love; we took all to ourselves, to learn how to give. We did\nthe things of death, to learn life truly.... We have suffered great\npain to know the secret source of the everlasting joy. We feared, in\norder that we may become fearless, and know the mystery of the dark.\nWe chose the road of separateness to feel the ecstasy of oneness and\ncompletion at last. We entered the terrible sphere of time and space to\ntranscend both and be free. We took upon ourselves pounds of tiresome\nflesh, to make of it a golden symbol of the great spiritual beauty and\nfreedom. We asked for everything at first, but through our desiring and\nbrooding, we learned the most wonderful lesson of all--wanting nothing\nbut to give.\n\n\"All is for us. The Path gleams before our eyes--the long, sunlit path\nleading to the Father's house. I go home with my love by my side. By\ncrying out in agony, and by weeping bitterly we have learned how to\n_laugh_. The world is needing us; we contain all things. From now on,\nwe live as one in Wisdom, Love and Power.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n23\n\nTHE MATING MYSTERY\n\nI thought a great deal about Dreve's love-story in relation to the\nyoung people, in relation to the love of humanity, and in relation to\nthe mystical growth of a man denied the mate on earth. In the first\nplace, there must be many great love stories in the coming decades of\nreconstruction, if for no other reason than that great children are\ncoming in. Such friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth can\nonly be born through the excellent and adequate love of man and woman.\nIn a recent novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something of the\nlove story of the future to a young American who is greatly troubled in\nhis romance. I quote three or four paragraphs because this expression\nin fiction is clearer than I could write it again. Rajananda says:\n\n    I have watched your devotion for the woman and it has been a holy\n    thing, my son. You love well. She has become more than earth-woman\n    to you. She has become the way to God. This leads to true _yoga_.\n    Where there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these\n    trials you could not have known so soon the love that will bring\n    you in good time to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs\n    sink into commonness soon--the dull and dreamless death. It is\n    those who are kept apart, who overcome great obstacles, who learn\n    the greatest thing of all--to wait--who touch the upper reaches of\n    splendour in the love of man and woman, and thus prepare themselves\n    for the greater union and the higher questing which is the love of\n    God together.\n\n    The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the\n    knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy\n    Breath that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his\n    work in the world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of\n    man and woman. And then, my son, we are almost at the end of the\n    night of the world. The Builders are coming in to take the places\n    of those who have torn down with war and every other madness\n    of self. These Builders must be born of men and women--the New\n    Race--but of men and women who have learned what great love means.\n\n    ... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to\n    worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone,\n    and left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The\n    time was not ripe for the race of heroes, therefore the mere\n    children of men brought forth children. And all the masters spoke\n    of the love of God for man, and the love of man for man, and the\n    love of woman for her child, but no one spoke of the love of man\n    and woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly over that, even\n    the lips of the avatars were sealed. But now the Old is destroying\n    itself in the outer world; the last great night of matter and of\n    self is close to breaking into light; the time for heroes has come,\n    my son, and heroes still must be born of this sacred mystery--the\n    love of man and woman. So all the priests have this message now,\n    all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Rajananda who\n    speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of woman--all are\n    opening to the world the great story, unsealing the greatness of\n    the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, coming\n    to lift the earth--the Saints are coming, my son--old Rajananda\n    hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their\n    heads and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now\n    I must sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once,\n    before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone\n    square at Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my\n    country--not far from this place, my son----\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the big expansions of life, in moments of great happiness, or\nhard-driven by pain--most of us have realised that the higher we rise\nin human consciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thousands of\npeople now living have risen, for short periods at least, above the\nsense of separateness, in which they realised that the finest and most\nexalted love a man may have is for \"the great orphan, Humanity.\"\n\nThe human heart is awakened through the love of one, to the more\nspacious expression for the world. All life is a learning how to love.\nThe last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before man turns his\nlove from flesh to spirit, is the grand passion of man and woman, yet\nman does not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity or to the Unseen.\nRather, hand in hand, the eyes of the man and woman are uplifted to one\nstar--the Apex of a Triangle perfected.... Yet one must not turn to the\nUnseen until he has learned the full agony and ecstasy of the seen.\n\n\"Love humanity by all means,\" I tell younger ones, \"but learn what love\nmeans first. Do not undertake to destroy passion until you have learned\nits glory and madness. Rather lift passion to adoration, and use it,\nfull-powered, upon that which unfolds forever for your worship. It is\nnot well to kill out a personality until you get one.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOur youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir the community with\nopinions or actions, which have to do with their own heart stories\nand the world's romance. They have a way of confounding the seasoned\nauthorities of pastorate and parish, with embarrassing questions in\nregard to method and magic in the making of two souls into one. These\nyoung people may not be modest according to Elizabethan ideals; in\nfact, the young women are apt to go half-way in the choice of the man\nwho is to be the father of her children, but this is an essential of\ninnate beauty and fastidiousness. More and more the higher types of the\nnew social order are questers for that single and holy mating which\nbrings nearer the dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and\nwhich gives us a glimpse of a future to die for.\n\nThe story of Romance cannot be written nor interpreted in life without\nits hill-rock, named Liberty. There is no man-made law for love. The\nfirst business of human beings is to find their own on earth. All\nmakeshifts part away; all short-range systems scurry past; all comets\nand asteroids cease to be considered, when a pair of suns whip into\neach other's attraction. And so it is with a true-mated pair. Those\nwho have dreamed long and kept themselves pure, realise here below for\na time the raptures of the elect. The new generation has a sense of\nthis; and while its eyes look hard and daringly for its own, its finer\nexamples preserve an integrity for the one until he is found.\n\nThe New Race realises that promiscuity is only a lack of taste. To draw\nthe fulness and redolence from a book or a friend or a lover, from any\nepisode or fabric of life, one must search for the true, as well as the\nbeautiful, and the beautiful as well as the good.... Perhaps that tells\nit best--it dares to love Beauty, this New Race. It means to bring\nback the beauty of the body as well as to breathe forth the Soul. Its\ndevil and its danger is Paganism. It loves Nature so well that it is in\ndanger of forgetting that the old Mother is not complete in herself,\nbut a manifest of her Lord Sun....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs to the liberty of its loves--the New Race realises that one cannot\nbe held, except by vulgar hands, where that one does not want to stay.\nA mated man and woman turn each other absolutely free, and the first\ncry of their liberty is toward one immortal nest. Those firmly caught\nin the pure dream are content to wait for each other. They do not\nexperiment. They realise the long road of romance--a road so long that\nthe three-score and ten is but a caravansary of the night. They build\nabove the flesh if for no other reason than to come into the greater\nbeauty of the flesh. Renouncing nothing, devoted to austerity only for\nmystical union, carried away in no abandonment, they seek to achieve\nthat command of the body by the mind, and that command of the body\nand mind by the Soul, which reveals the ultimate truth--that the plan\nis for Joy; that the best of all things is for men who have mastered\nthemselves; that chastity is the breath and inevitable answer to\nself-conquest.\n\nThe growth of Romance through an ideal mating becomes a fusion at last\nof all the loves of earth. Connubial blessedness is therefore more\nreverently to be promoted than procreation, for upon it depends the\nloveliness of issue. The New Race acts upon the conviction that the\nlove between man and woman is the holiest of earth expressions, rather\nthan the love of mother and child. The first contains the second.\n\nStill no earth love is the end.... Built through austerity and\nidolatry, through denial and abandon, through madness and martyrdom,\nthrough pettiness and chivalry, through pain turning less and less\nslowly through the years to power, through a little zone of peace at\nlast (the calm before the greater storm) the fervour of man and woman\nbecomes, in the fullness of time, too strong for earth, and in the\nfinal and keenest pain, the administry of a higher force begins....\nI mean to tell this in a queer way through the next three or four\nchapters. Straight statements will not contain it quite--for it is\n_still_ with dream, as yet. Rather I mean to weave the concept for\nyou--fold on fold--so that at the end you will have it, as they do who\nhave listened in Chapel many days.\n\nFlesh is not integrated finely enough to carry the higher ardours\nof devotion. If the great saints who have learned to pour out their\nsouls in adoration to the Father should turn back to a mere physical\nexpression, they would blast themselves as well as the object of their\nmadness. The awakening of the higher forces of love lifts the eye of\nthe adorer from the breast to the brow of the beloved--from the brow to\nthe Initiatory Star risen at last to meridian.\n\nA new dimension of love is entered upon. All life tells the story.\nWatch the big birds lift from the sand to the cushion of wings; watch\nthe airplane quicken its speed until it lifts from the monorail....\nMachinery of racking power in a falling house, is that great love which\nhas not yet learned to look above the body of the chosen one.\n\nThis change is the last and highest pain of romance--the breaking\napart of the temporal, for the story of the long road. Man and woman\nmust go apart for the mastery of self, before they are ready for the\nhigher mating. The great love story invariably crosses the mountains\nof separation. If we cling too long to the less, nature is outraged,\nbeauty is drained. Brief separations are dangerous, because the lovers\nbuild recklessly with ideals and the rarest spiritual materials.\nMeeting again too soon, they encounter an unmiraculous creature face\nto face. If they had really completed the journey, finished the task\napart, they would have come into that tenderness which loves the human\nfrailties of each other, and which sees the manifest of three-score-ten\nmerely as a garment particularly made for a particular journey.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is always wrecking work, before a new and wider circle is entered\nupon. The time will come when men and women shall learn that the\nmagic of going apart is equal to the magic of coming together. In all\nbirth-times, in all transitions, the consciousness of the bearer is\nchanged--often queerly.... One can endure the primitive and the child\nin the other's mind; one might adore the great play of passion, and\nall the art of it; one might never weary of fragrance of throat, or\nmagnetism of hand, the inimitable plays and child things--but the mind\nis forever the slayer of the real....\n\nRemember, there is not a full union possible on the physical plane.\nThe body is the barrier that separates souls. Those who believe they\nhave all of each other in that which they see and hear and touch--have\nfar to come in the real love story. Have you ever asked yourself\nwhat physical passion is? It is a frenzy to overcome separation.\nThis separation was necessary for the diffusion of life. It is the\noutbreath, the going forth, the great generative plan.... Physical\npassion does not satisfy the agony of the soul; often it only makes\nthe agony more keen. In the early phenomena of all great love stories,\nthere is encountered that blinding, bewildering need _to become the\nother_--to lose identity, to fly somehow into the breast of the other\nand be no more. This is keen pain of love but also an intimation of\ngreater union.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere was a man who had found much of beauty and power, much of the\nBurning Desert and certain wonderful touches of the peace of the Hill\nCountry--in his story with a certain woman. She loved him in a way more\nreal than he dreamed. Life had shown him much to scoff at. He had been\nglad to make the most, merely, of an exquisite playwoman. One day she\nwas down town to meet him, but he left her for a business appointment.\nThat afternoon, about everything he had in a material way was swept\nfrom him--much to which his ambition had tied itself for several\nyears. The man was badly rocked. He walked the streets--shocked almost\nto laughter, to find all that he had held for, and held to, plucked\nfrom under.... At length he thought of the woman who waited. The\nlaugh of mockery quickened, because he thought of losing her, too--a\nworldly-heart who would go with the rest--goods that perish.\n\nHe knocked at the door where she waited. It was opened swiftly. He\ndid not need to speak.... She seemed above and around him. There was\na great still sweetness he had never dreamed of as a man (and could\nonly remember dimly as a child to his mother), arms of tenderness\nand healing.... He saw that instant in her eyes that nothing of the\nworld ever did nor ever could really separate them. The queerest thing\nabout it all was, that he used a word he never could use before--a\nword, as he said, that had been so badly worked by the world that it\nneeded a lot of washing before it was fit for him. Yet it came to his\nlips--_wife_--in a way that showed him also a new meaning to the word\n_forever_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis subject of love and mating is only opened. There is much to say\nin pages that follow, but now, apropos of nothing, if not this theme,\nthere is a chapter of letters. They somehow contain the spirit of many\nthings I have longed to express. Those to whom they appeal will find\nthe last pages of the book richer because of the insert.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n24\n\nCHAPTER OF LETTERS\n\nI\n\n\nWe come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a\nconsiderable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying:\n\"I want nothing but to give----\" ... To be able to say this without an\nanswering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits\nwith his dogs.\n\nTo be free--that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only\nspoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be--how the\nproffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love\nis giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be\nhappy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold....\n\nOne sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes\neminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as\nthe spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral\nmerely. You can enjoy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows\nitself. Others seek to bestow it upon you.\n\nHold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to\nyour work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not\nuntil then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of\nyour task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions--you but do\nwhat the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube.\nIt cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be\nfree, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be\nirresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths;\nit cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others.\n\nWe have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us\nhave cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions.\nWe learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to\nourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure;\nuntil we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices\nof personal self, which is subject to death.\n\nIt's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help\nothers. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying.\nWe have to silence the self to hear the Master.\n\nThis silencing goes on and on in all our work. Pain shows the way....\nWe must traverse the deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must see\none by one every material thing betray us. This is the Path--money,\nopinions, ambitions, health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we\nobstruct their approaches with our own conceptions and our own greeds.\nWe rise one by one above these illusions. The last and greatest is\nthat desire which is born in generation.... All the old reaches its\nhighest perfection in the human love story. All Nature binds one to the\nloveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. Because it is not\nthe Way itself, it appears to end. The great intensities of agony now\nbegin. The soul realises that only the foothills of pain are passed;\nthat here are the mountains, here are the deep valleys that contain the\nGethsemanes and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which the Cross\nmust be morticed and tenoned....\n\nThe sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, the peasant's\nsimplicity, the coming of the coolness of evening, the glory of the\nclay and waterfall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing winds\nthat come slowly with their heavy fruitage of power from the mountains,\nthe swift winds with the holy breath of the Sea--all these in the\nbreast of the mate.... When this dream is taken, one bleeds, laterally\nand full-length. One wants to die; thus he overcomes death. He feels\nthe great burden in which all other burdens lose themselves. When he\npasses this highest series of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear\nand shining ahead. This the test of faith because you deal with love\nitself. Your soul, in its earliest advices, tells you that your love of\nearth is pure.\n\nIt is. It is good. It is the highest here.\n\nIt is still to be perfected by the races, even by the new races, who\nmust be born bright with its untried magic.... But so long as it is\nidolatry to that which is subject to change, it is hourly impregnating\nthe life itself with the seeds of pain....\n\nYou are called to the love of Souls. Sooner or later you must go. It\nis the Path. It is the steep path to the Master. You give up all to\ngo this way--and then you laugh to find it all returned in lovelier\ndimensions. You take your idolatry from the plane of mutation--lift it\ninto the glorious and changeless plateaus of the spirit....\n\nYou turn from the Seen to the Unseen.\n\nThis is the passage. You are called to go alone a little way--to be\nworthy of the great Meeting. You carry your gifts of the passage woven\ninto the Seamless Robe of your being. All that impedes day by day you\ncast aside, as an army making a perilous retreat casts off day by day\nits impedimenta--until at last you stand naked upon the eminence, and\nthe Voice says, \"Be not Ashamed--I am the Beloved....\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOut of slaveries.... We think at first that God is without--at last we\nlook for Him within. We come from the happiness of the Father's House\nmaking our great journey, but our Soul's quest continually is for the\nhappiness again. Yet we must not look back. It is failure to go back.\nThat which we have left unfinished, is not behind, but awaiting ahead.\n\nWe are slaves to our bodily health until we learn that the body is\nsuperbly fitted for obedience to the Soul; that it comes into its\nrhythm and beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very process of\nmastery is to lead it to the Fountain of Youth.\n\nWe learn that truly to be rich, we must give continually. We learn by\nthe quickenings of our spirit that white lines run from the brows of\nall creatures to an apex which is God--that God is all. All is God....\nAll is one. We are one. We are brothers. One house for all at the end\nof the Road.... We find the King in our own Souls. We learn from that\nthat all men are Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays of God.\nWe come at last to see the sons of God in the eyes of passing men.\n\nOur passion now is outpoured. That is joy. We ask nothing but to give,\nto heal,--to permit the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through\nus, but first we clear away the obstructions of the self.\n\nAchieving our own chastity, we perceive the potential chastity in every\nface. We are deluded no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes from\nthe Flame. All purity must be found within. We have no fault with\nothers when we are cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the\nrunners, the singers, the charioteers.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe learn that we can give nothing real away--that all we do for others\nis service for ourselves. We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the\nhuman for the divine--give to receive, give to be radiant. We must be\nFlame to be fed by the Flame Itself.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the\npersonality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us\nwhere we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not\nrealise its beauty until we see it mastered--until we see it with the\neyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love\nourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our\nMasters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain\nall the gradations.\n\nThe last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human\nlove story, because all weaknesses are easily shown through that--all\nour pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at\nlast are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with\nHim the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire\nafter that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that\npasses understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of\nthe Christ.\n\n\nII\n\n... A wonderful morning--a rare Monday--the highest hold yet--all is\nascending. All beings are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to\nwork one morning--the next morning cushions are there for me.... I\nspeak a sentence from a book with a word how much it means and how\nworthy to love--and the sentence is brought to me illuminated on\nvellum.... They bring the finest fruits--honey for tea, cream for\npeeled figs, black bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted\nbutter.... I walk up the mountain to work--and the voice of the\ngardener is a benediction from the Most High--and I stand for a moment\nlooking toward your sea over the city, and the birds say, \"It is time.\"\n\nThere is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alhambran villa, great rose\ngardens.... I come to the pool--dip my feet in the still waters and I\nknow from that how chill the night has been. I look at the lilies--how\nfar they have opened--and know the time of day. I pray for a moment\nunder a priestly Pine ... and my heart goes out in the new joy we have\nfound--the joy of knowing that one may be the king of the world and the\nconfirmed Son of God--if he but learn the one lesson--to want nothing.\n\nPool of lilies in the morning sun. (A little lizard is walking along\nthe arm of the bench. My bare feet are quiet, and he wonders what kind\nof barkless trees they are. He is here and there. One sees his body\nmove, not the members. The sun puts him to sleep.) ... The pool is\nstill as the waters of sleep. The Sea--I think of her always as the\nemotional body of the world--the old Sea Mother with diamond-tipped\nemotions. And then I think of the Master Jesus walking upon the Sea\nand saying \"Peace be still\" to the stormy waters.... Each Soul must\nsay that to his emotions. We learn to walk upright upon the earth,\nthen to still the waters, then to have dominion over the birds of the\nair--and last to be seven times refined in the Fire.... Earth, water,\nair, fire--the first quaternary.... Yes, we are learning to say \"Peace\nbe still\" to the stormy waters. We do not know how beautiful they are\nuntil they obey.\n\n... Out of the still waters in the pure blue starlight, the lily\nblooms--the lotus on the still lagoons of the Soul.... Naked as a\nserpent's head, the sealed bud rises from the water in the night....\nOut of the power that follows the peace upon the waters--for the blooms\nof the spirit lift greatly in the tranquillity of the heart that\nfollows the storm--out of the power of peace upon the waters, the lotus\nrises and waits like a bride in the dawn-dusk for her Lord Sun to brush\nback the veils and find her heart.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is only the beginning of heaven we find here. We weary of the\nworld and turn back to the Father's House. We have plucked the fruits\nof pain--we have thirsted and hungered again and again.... Out of\nthe darkness we have formed the thought, at last, that there must be\nquenching waters, and somewhere bread to eat that does not perish....\nYou can say it in a thousand ways. The Prodigal tells the story. He\narises and turns back. Evolution has ceased, involution begins again.\nHe is being folded back to the Father with all the treasures of Egypt.\nHe has ceased to diffuse himself in generation, through which he has\nbecome an integral part of every fibre of the world, and begins now to\ncall in and synthesise all his spiritual possessions. The processes of\ndiffusion were in pain--the integration is joy again. Each day of the\nup-slope his step quickens. The more he knows, the more he believes.\nThe more he sees, the larger his faith--the more his treasures, the\nmore sumptuous his order. \"Unto him who hath it shall be given.\"\n\nAgain, it is merely lifting the consciousness from time to eternity,\nfrom the cramp of space to the flow of the universe--from pain to\nplay--from desire to radiation.... One ascends and at each steps sees\nfarther. Day by day, the work of the installation of the higher powers\ngoes on. We give up nothing but that which impedes the inflow of\ngodly forces. That which we think we want to-day will look as absurd\nto-morrow as the hopelessness of a child over a plaything broken.\n\nIt's a way of loving every step. Thus we heal from the infinite tears\nof the changes of matter and dissolution, and lift our love to the\nMasters and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly only that which can\ncontain us. If the Masters loved us with all their power, we would fall\nin the madness of too much light.... Always, they give us all the love\nthat we can endure.... We give our all to them and expand daily, until\nwe know the passion to break ourselves open in ecstasy, like the king\nbee under the whirring wings of the queen.\n\nIn the human body, the diaphragm is the surface of the waters. If\nour consciousness is below that, we are in generation. To become\nregenerated is to lift the balance of consciousness above--to\nrise like the lotus from the face of stilled waters.... It is a\nquickened vibration. Simultaneously, one lifts from cerebration to\nintuition--from the time of matter to the spaciousness of Soul--from\nthe light of the camp-fire in the night, to the full day upon the\nplain--from the son of man to the Son of God--from the pain of loving\nwith desire to the irresistible creativeness of wanting nothing but to\ngive.\n\n\nIII\n\n... I was watching the pool this morning--fish and frogs and eels\nunder the lily-pads--a slow cold life. They have colour and grace--but\neyes of glass. They move so softly down in the dim coppery light....\nI thought of the lakes and the seas, the simple cold of all life--the\ncoldest and most rudimentary in the great deeps.... Birds were playing\nabout in the rose gardens, darting in and out of the bamboo clumps and\nyucca stalks. Humming-birds were continually fanning the trumpet and\nhoneysuckle vines.... I thought of the skylarks--throats that open\nonly as wings beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where the\nwhite gulls flash--the lonely lakes and tarns where the heron cross in\nthe evening and the loon cries at night--the cypress deeps where the\nflamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the eagles that cross from peak\nto peak, along the spine of the continents.\n\n... And then, of course, it came to me--the old conquest--how we must\nlift our consciousness above the face of the waters and put on our\nwings.... Many have almost finished with the waters of generation--the\nemotional body of man, the same as the planet.... In the beginning, it\nwas necessary to \"go down into the water\"--the terms of the baptismal\nrite. Regeneration is \"coming up out of the water.\" The struggle\nbetween the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by the faith, and\nthe lapse of faith, of Peter when he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk\nupon his storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he sank saved him\nfrom perishing. Regenerated, he walked with the Lord upon the waters.\nI remember, too, the saying, \"You must be born again of water and of\nspirit----,\" the story of regeneration told once more....\n\nIt's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations of the creatures of\nthe deep, to the winged passages of air and sun and starlight.... We\nthink that we give up joys of life--we plunge back again and again to\nthe dim cold waters--our eyes blinded at first by the light, our senses\nfrightened by the fragrance and the space.... As if the reflected\nlight of the lower cosmos could compare with the pure radiance above;\nas if the love of desire could compare to the glory of the outpouring\nheart--the heart filled with light--the fulness of spirit, the ecstasy\nof wings.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nIV\n\n... The time comes in the progress of spiritual aspiration when the\ngenerative impulse begins to manifest within rather than without.\nFirmly and gently the thoughts are turned to the Image within or above;\nthe tendencies for outward manifestation slowly but surely give way....\nThis work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times a day the thoughts\nof earthy attraction are finished with a soul conception, where\nformerly the mere physical presence sufficed.\n\nNothing answers thought more swiftly, but in this passage of mastery,\nif a single desire eludes from the aspirant, he must meet it later\nin a tearing and cumulative call. Surely at length the mind rises to\nrule. One's conception changes from the fear, the torment and the red\nhaze, to gentleness and calm, a readiness to know _all_ the mysteries\nof life--to care for and respect all functions as one only can who has\nmastered himself.\n\nTo cast them out in hatred is failure. That means the hardening. It\nblights the beauty of the vales and all magic.\n\nWhen one begins to unfold the wonders of the kingdom within, as one is\ncalled to do in the higher and contemplative spheres of the artistic\nlife, there is an increasing joy that makes it easy, more and more, to\nlift the power of life from the torment and unrest of the generative\nseas.\n\nOne finds his dream of the beloved changed and infinitively endeared to\nhim. Patience, reverence, tenderness comes to the love that once knew\nonly the single passion of a male for the mammal. Even that, in memory,\nbecomes beautiful to eyes of wisdom and calm--all God's plan. One is\nsensitive all through his breast for the unfathomable sweetness of life\nand love. He sees the child and the immortal in the mate. He finds that\nthe body is truly sacred because he sees it with love and not with\ndesire. These are good tidings. They make one happy to write them.\n\nThere are seven centres of ecstasy in the body. Through the mastery\nof will and love and action, the life-force is lifted to dwell with\nand awaken these centres. With each awakening, a new power comes--a\nnew joy--a new hill-range crossed toward the Father's House; with each\nawakening, the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, and the\nbeloved without is held more dear. The wondrous story of regeneration\ngoes on and on, to the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To\nlove--that is all the Soul asks.\n\nMomentary passion swiftly passes in the increase of spiritual\naspiration. Its force is not killed, but used for awakening the higher\nand immortal principles where real love abides. The hand of the loved\none becomes sacred unto tears, and the joy of life is to serve.\n\nThe whole body is presently repolarised--the fire sparking upward--the\napex of the triangle turned upward--desire of soul instead of desire\nof the body.... The mating of the mind and the soul is the larger, the\ncosmic consciousness, awaited so long. This means that the Lord has\ncome into His Temple--the body made ready. It means that the mind and\nsoul are one, the house no longer divided against itself. The lover\nis ready for the approach of his mate. Each has been cleansed at the\nfountains apart....\n\nOne must be utterly weary of the old. This repolarisation of the\ngenerative force cannot come until one has heard with furious passion,\nin the depths of pain, the call to the higher life, the new quest. Not\nrepression then, but transmutation. One changes gently, often under a\nmystic administry, but always with growing love for the body and for\nthe world, using the life forces for healing and concentration and\nthe power to listen to the Lord within--the Voice of the Silence....\nUpon the illumination of the seven centres by the life force, another\nmystery takes place. The levitation of the spiritual life overpowers\nto a considerable extent the natural gravitation of the flesh--the\ndown-pull of years. The result, of course, is the restoration of health\nto all tissues of the body--the Fountain of Youth starts singing\nagain.... To you.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n25\n\nROMANCE\n\n\nAffairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the\nclouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real\nnovel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this;\nthe arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are\nnot yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what\nwe please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for\na time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we\nsee it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel\nor sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that\npay. We keep in touch with the world--that is practical mysticism. We\nrejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is\nvery calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily,\nperforming the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required.\n\nLong ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent\nagreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that\nthey array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day\neach would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel\nfurnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would\nhave been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't\nnoted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the\nreal Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even\nif he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher\nworkmanship. Romance--each has his idea of that. Each does his best by\nthat. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very\nwell:\n\n    Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I\n    have had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the\n    world--to be with them _one at a time_. In the Rockies or in the\n    misty isles of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and\n    sense. _One_ will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels,\n    foamy bits and lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell\n    of the hold of a ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and\n    the smell of black coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will\n    mean the sun betin desert--camels, and men stooping over a fire.\n    They are all my comrads.\n\n    Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down\n    and lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later\n    we would take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down.\n    They were wounderful days--those. I got right to the heart of Fred,\n    and he did to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me.\n    Those were the nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go\n    apart. He is in New York now, going to college, and I am here in\n    California. It does not seem right for me to be in this God blest\n    place in the Youneverse, and he in the slums of the world, going to\n    college. But it is the Plan, or it would not be this way.\n\n    The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot\n    last long--for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain\n    leaves, then all will be ready for the road and the great comrads,\n    horses and the road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great\n    future--all ahead--my comrads--all comrads--the world will be all\n    comrads!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAll our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so\nmuch, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there\nare no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means _not to stay_!\nIt was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other\nreason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss\nhis train; one must not linger after curfew has sounded. There is no\ngrey confronting of misery--like that of meeting one's own commonness\ncatching up.\n\nIt's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We\nlearn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending\nof lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got\nhis morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain....\n\nThere is something to do with _martyrdom_ in my dream of Romance in\nlater years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word--a singing\nabout it. The name _Kuru t'ul Ayn_ comes to my mind in thoughts of\nRomance--\"Consolation of the Eyes,\" martyred soon after the Forerunner\nBab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she\nhad beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked\nthrough the door of heaven in her eyes--some haunting mystery there of\nbeauty and bestowal--the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in\nthe same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of\nlife, transcending every man-made institution.\n\nOne of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door\nto the dusk,--baby heads weaving under her hands--warm air coming up\nfrom the valleys, but _his_ step not coming that night.... Here is a\nsuggestion from one of her letters:\n\nHave just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow\nbig and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for\nthe Stranger's dinner--tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over\nand over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to\nfall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it\nnot awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the\nsoil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look _back_ to see how sweet the\npurity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves\ndo not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom--could there be\na more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a\nplanting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to\nbe in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open\nand ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for\nhard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest\nthat cries aloud: \"None have more pain to hold than we!\" ... We are all\nworking toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with\nopen arms out there. We all send white love to you--our waiting Mary!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPeasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the\npassers-by--always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams\nof the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of\nRomance follow, from the twelve-year period:\n\n    The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the\n    plough, in the peasant's body--dissatisfaction with self and\n    surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who\n    is content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His\n    soul stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much\n    simple blackness. It is just _that_, which gives him the power to\n    stand up against the ways he has known so long--to stand up for\n    himself--to push the new vague dreams through to life and light.\n    It is all blind at first, but great and brave, too. The call that\n    would come to the peasant would be to the Town--to many men and\n    things, for that is just the opposite from his life. In a simple\n    way he would go to the depths of the worst he could find--to the\n    extreme.\n\n    The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness,\n    satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks,\n    until he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up\n    into the light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls\n    of the \"white torrent\" are rushing on through the dark night, a\n    night that grows darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their\n    faces are tragic, drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark\n    cloud that they are tearing themselves through.... Only the poor\n    fat ones! they fill you with sadness because you can not help them\n    and they are not trying to help themselves. They seem to sink\n    almost visibly, farther and farther down, as they laugh and smile,\n    and nod their heads to each other (only to each other). The light\n    around them is really not a light at all--just a colour, a cold,\n    grey-black colour that looks almost dead. You could laugh if they\n    had anything to do with you, any power over you--you could laugh at\n    them and tell them that you were laughing, but their helplessness\n    hurts you. _They_ can only hurt themselves. There is absolutely\n    no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. They are\n    all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign of\n    flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great\n    inner glowing--the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things\n    in people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also,\n    to laugh at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic\n    Ruffians--a Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious\n    song of stern compassion and deep love, filling all with their\n    questing for power and beauty.... I hear their laughter.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nShe paints the City Street a bit darker in this:\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark\n    and noisy streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men--little men,\n    following their women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me\n    goes out to those little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints\n    its pain upon our souls. And their women now--with faces wanting,\n    always wanting, everything in them _wanting_! I have been carried\n    away by these dim hungry faces. I have seen them staring at me\n    with blank surprise. But then they hurry on, and the forgotten\n    babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass--little men following.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n... The pain of utter isolation--somehow this means Romance to me, in\na deeper fold of being. Isolation--the hate of an undivided people--a\nman standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of\nthe natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his\nbig task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has\nsomething to do with the coming of Saviours.\n\nTime approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails\nlonger to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly\nwarm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is\n_martyrdom_.... I tell all this from time to time in tales--but only\nthe children seem to understand....\n\nRomance--I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days\nand found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest.\nI wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing\nthat any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and\npathetic to me--but under it all--the endless iteration of the Soul:\n\"Here is a _man_--as much me as myself!\" A call in that--always a call\nin that. One longs to die for that, once and for all.\n\nI crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle\nand was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet\nwound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted\nto see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag\nof pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the\nworld, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes\nof the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years\nafterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment--and that's\nwhy I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in\nthe eyes of passing men. That is _Romance_.\n\nThere is more of death and less of days in my dream of Romance now....\nI can see a man giving up his woman because she is dearer than his\nown life to him. I can see a man going to the scaffold for a country\nthat is taking his life and hers. (Always I see him loving his country\nmore dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) ... I see him\ntaking his woman in his hands--half laughing, half crying, their faces\nupturned--one creature in that moment of parting, as they had never\nbeen in street or church, or state.... Romance in that.\n\nI have a line here from the Valley Road Girl:\n\n    ... Lastly, it came like a commandment to me--to give all to\n    the Coming Generation--to acknowledge the New Race as one's\n    God--remembering always that all Gods are jealous Gods.\"\n\nIt's all in that, our dream of Romance--Democracy, the Planetary Hive.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI am using a short story as the next chapter, because it brings nearer\nto the centre of the picture certain ideals of romance, workmanship,\nmartyrdom, love and death, than many essays could do. A tale may be\na master-synthesis. Perhaps it is just the thing to show you what\nwe mean, as a group,--what we mean about many things. This is not a\nmarketable tale; in fact, it was done with the idea of making a place\nfor itself just here in this book.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n26\n\nTHE COSMIC PEASANT\n\nA SHORT STORY\n\n\nWhen I was a lad I remember hearing some one say he had read a story\nof love and war. I thought of it just now, as I lay panting a bit in\na queer nest for the night in the Galbraudin Foothills--in the midst\nof an army that had no country yet--a tragic document unfolding in\nmy heart.... A story of love and war--yes, I had seen one. It was\nwritten upon the cells of my brain, the deeper parts engraved upon the\nheart--the old red war with a new dream hovering above it, and the old\ntrue love, white as ever, yet a touch of the rose and gold of the new\nrace in its folds. It seems almost my story. Like Job's servant, only I\nam spared to tell it. Such a little while ago, I thought the tales of\nlove and war all told.\n\nI saw Varsieff first at school, and went to him at once. Literally, I\nwent to him. It was at recess, and I followed at his heels to his room\ninstead of my own. He was not surprised. I was always at my best beside\nhim. He accepted this gift from me. One who learns to give greatly as\nVarsieff did, learns also to accept the best things with grace. I only\nleft his room long enough to get my bag. Gladly would I have slept at\nhis door, but he asked me in. We were to be mates. Often he assured me\nthat we were men, face to face; that I was not his Boswell, not his\ndisciple, but a man-to-man friend. Yet I knew that my power was not the\npower of Varsieff, also that I was most powerful when I realised his\nsplendid superiority.\n\nI followed him during all the vacations. He loved the North\nCountry--snow on the mountains, cold night rains, the filled fields and\nshrunken rivers of summer, the sound and natural things. He said he\nwould find his tropical island when his work was done, but that work\nmeant Russia to him. He was genius. Every one loved him. One vacation\ntime we undertook to walk together over the Torqueval Peaks. He\nborrowed a guitar at a peasant house there in the mountains, and played\nfor an hour as I have never heard any one play. I had been with him for\nalmost three years and had not known he touched the instrument.\n\nIn one of those days of our walking-tour in the mountains an instance\noccurred of Varsieff's immeasurable tenderness of heart. One golden\nmorning as we walked through a little village, past a vined wicker\nfence--a huge yellow cat sprang forth from the leaves and caught a bird\non the wing. A kind of sob came from my friend at the swift little\ntragedy enacted in the wonderful morning light. I turned--Varsieff's\nface was back to its childhood--a depiction of childish horror--all\nfinished manhood erased.\n\nMany times in our talk his sentences formed a poem, which I would rush\naway to put down. He learned to do this alone afterward. Once I went\nto his room in Moscow after I had been away several months, and found\nscattered among clothing, papers, books and tea-things, a set of recent\nlyrical gems of his. These I gathered together in the little book, now\nmarching around the world.\n\nI smile to remember when I came to learn that Varsieff had other\nfriends as devoted as I. It hurt at first; I could not understand. His\nbig magic then was that he wanted nothing. He used to say that a man is\nat his worst when he wants anything for himself. The fact is Varsieff\nin wanting the _letter_ of nothing, really wanted the spirit of all;\nin wanting nothing for himself in those days, he wanted everything for\nthe world, a new heaven and a new earth, first and especially a new\nRussia. Then the day came when he wanted a woman. This was altogether\nunexpected. I thought that Varsieff absolutely had given himself to\nthe revolution--that humanity was his bride.\n\nI was with him when he first saw Paula Mantone--that is but part of her\nname. It was in Moscow. His voice, as he spoke to me, watching her, had\na different and deeper inflection than I ever heard before. She was\njust a girl--poorly dressed, who had paused to speak laughingly to an\nold flower-woman.\n\n\"Wait, Lange,\" he said to me, and crossed to her.\n\nIt was in the Spring of the year. The morning was very bright. She\nturned from the tray of flowers and looked up at him. His hands went\nout to her shoulders. He was searching her face with a queer and tense\nsmile--as one who finds a woman after a few months' separation in one\nwhom he has left a child. Of course, my thought was that he had known\nher before. She, too, would have slept at his door....\n\nI heard their voices. He asked her name, where she lived, and how he\ncould reach her again. It all seemed trifling to me. Varsieff had never\nbeen like this before. The rest of the day he was silent. We walked and\ndined together, but his thoughts were not for me. For once, they were\nnot for Russia. There was a smile in his eyes, and often he turned back\nthe way we had come. Once he said:\n\n\"I had to leave her. It was quite all I could stand. I do not think the\nworld is a place for two such people to be happy in. Possibly, we may\nbe allowed to meet from time to time----\"\n\nI was inclined to call this nonsense. A little later he added strangely:\n\n\"Yes, it would be dangerous to let go and become merely human in a case\nlike this.\"\n\nThe next three years Varsieff and I were much apart. I do not profess\nquite to understand the obstacles between him and Paula Mantone.\nThey had loved each other instantly and torrentially. They were much\ntogether, yet there was some super-human torture about it. Even if I\nhave a glimpse of the mystery, I'm afraid few will understand. There is\nsomething back of each one of us greater than our actions. We are all\ngreater than we seem. It was as if Varsieff and Paula Mantone were only\nintended to meet here--to meet and quicken each other for a greater\ngiving to the world. I wonder if it is quite true, what he said toward\nthe last: That really splendid lovers may consecrate themselves to each\nother, but they must also learn to give each other to the world.... In\nthe beginning they tried to lose themselves in each other, and they\nencountered untellable pain.\n\nAt length came the night when Varsieff returned to my lodgings, saying\nthat it was only a question of time when they should find peace. He\nsaid he knew they would find peace, for he had already touched it\nmomentarily. I wondered if she were dead, and he caught my thought.\n\n\"No, Lange,\" he said. \"I am still to see her from time to time.\"\n\nBefore that first meeting with Paula Mantone in the street, Varsieff\nhad loved Russia and the world, a friend and comrade to me and to many\nothers. All his love had suddenly been called in and directed upon the\nwoman. After the three years, he gave himself to all of us again--but\na quickened illuminated man. He had been brilliant to me before that,\nbut the brilliance of phosphorous compared to sunlight now. Varsieff\nwas making some strange spiritual initiation out of his love story. His\npresence glorified me on the night of his coming--the summer before the\nwar.\n\n\"There are four layers to Russia,\" I remember him saying. \"The royalty\non top, then the dreamers, then the middlemen, then the peasants. Kings\nand middlemen go together; dreamers and peasants go together.... Yes,\ntime will come when the dreamers and the peasants truly shall belong to\neach other. They have been lovers a long time.\"\n\nI asked him about the other pair.\n\n\"The kings and the middlemen will cancel each other,\" he answered.\n\nVarsieff was the most active man I ever knew, and yet he moved easily\nas one in a sort of spiritual drift. He was an intellectualist with\nthose who used their heads, a devotionalist with those who used their\nhearts, a mystic among dreamers, a child among children. Though never\nknown much publicly, he was to my mind the biggest occult force of the\nnew Russia. I doubt if there was another man, unless it was Christonal,\nwho gave more impulse and direction to the revolutionary movement.\n\nThe heads of many departments drew inspiration from Varsieff. I\nhave seen him carry himself lightly through a day of decisions and\nimprovements and conceptions, which do not come to the ordinary master\nof democracy in a year. I have seen him encounter, worked out by\nothers, suggestions and innovations which he himself had made--Varsieff\nnot realising that the thought was his own. He would innocently praise\nhis own work, as carried out by another. The last few months preceding\nthe revolution were the busiest I ever knew. We became new men. We did\nnot leave Petrograd, but prepared secretly for the big unburdening of\nthe soul of a people. The last few days, before the government changed\nhands, were charged with a wrecking silence.\n\nChristonal's nerve broke. For twelve hours he was in and out of a\nsystem of baths and manhandlings, and I was one who stood by. Varsieff\nsmiled it through, his voice calm, his eyes often looking away as he\nspoke. The leaders of the younger party saw who was the real chief that\nday, though Christonal is a strong leader.\n\nI was always a good desk man, and was trying to get some order in a\nbundle of cipher messages in the heat of the night, when Varsieff came\nand lifted me laughingly by the shoulders, thrusting the messages into\none of my deep inner pockets. I thought he was dragging me off to bed,\nbut when we were alone, he said:\n\n\"_She_ is near. I can't leave. Will you go to her for me?\" ...\n\nHe told me many things to say.\n\nI found Paula Mantone after many hours in one of the Registmonten\nhospitals. She was frail and feverish from much labour, not regularly\nattached to any nursing staff. The instant I saw her, I realised more\nclearly what Varsieff had been doing--trying to kill himself with work\nfor the Cause. Clearly, she had lost interest in all but death and\nservice. I had been too much with Varsieff to notice his arrival at the\nsame point, but I saw their joint endeavour through her. It seemed to\nme like a death-pact.\n\nA new mystery for me. Evidently they had realised they must wait for\nrelease in death, but serve meanwhile. The marvel of Varsieff's sending\nme when he might have come himself, gave me just an inkling of the\ntremendous power and patience which had come to him. Two years, or\neven a year ago, he would have endangered new Russia for an hour with\nPaula Mantone.\n\nI could not breathe this rare atmosphere. So far as I knew, there was\nno woman for me in earth or heaven, but certainly I would not have been\nable to look over a living woman's shoulder for her mystic counterpart,\nand long for death to consummate the real mating. But war teaches\nlovers many wonderful things.\n\nPaula Mantone was a kind of white silence. You had to listen keenly\nfor her step and give your attention to her voice. She was utterly\nfeminine--malleable like gold. Even to me, she was the meaning of\nlove. I had no thought of her being _my_ woman, and yet she seemed\nspiritually to contain some sister who would answer for me. Soldiers\nworshipped her. I think each saw his own in her presence. It was the\nfinished magic of the Trojan Helen again--every man's desire, as gold\ncontains potentially all the metals, and the rose the essence of all\nthe flowers....\n\nShe was the quietest woman I ever saw. She seemed formed of white\ncloud--the sun on the other side. That was it--Varsieff was shining on\nthe other side. She answered him, light for light--gold for gold. For\nthe rest of us, she had that white, saintly lustre. And even in that,\nwe found much to make us brave and keep us pure.\n\nDeep within, there was some wonder about Varsieff and Paula Mantone\nwhich my brain could not interpret exactly. But the world had suddenly\nbecome to me, in her presence, a place of divided hearts--millions of\ndivided lovers around the world. I had only known the shock and misery\nof war before, and the thrilling roar of comrades, the crash of the\nwreckers and the songs of the builders ever nearer. Now I heard the\nstill voices of lovers everywhere. In the pressures of air--callings,\ncryings, yearnings made audible.\n\nIt was a new door of the heart that she opened--her particular gift\nto me. That moment, though I had loved and served Varsieff for years,\nI knew more thrillingly than ever his greatness, because this woman\nloved him. To me, to all soldiers, she gave a reflection of that superb\nbounty. To him she gave its _incandescence_. Perhaps together they\nfound it too terrible a light for earth, or perhaps they were unwilling\nto find their fulness of days in a world so charged with agony as these\nyears.\n\nShe left me a moment, answering some voice which I had not heard, and\nstood for several seconds beside the cot of a bearded soldier, her\nfingers upon his grey-white brow. I did not realise until after she\nmoved, that she was there at the moment of his passing. I thought of it\nagain: She was the white silence. I think the soldier died, believing\nthat his woman was there.\n\nTwenty cots in the place--a low, cold room lit with a handful of\ncandles. The smell of blood and sickness and soiled clothing mingled\nwith the bitterness of iodoform as the chill draught swept through. The\npeasant soldiers knew only the meagrest care. Their wounds were dressed\nas often as possible, but there were five times too many cases for the\nservice, and the whole corps was impoverished.\n\nShe stood still in the dim distance a moment longer, her fingers\ntouching the brow already cold. Then she seemed to remember that I was\nwaiting at the far door. I was not twenty feet away, and yet in the\nfew seconds required for her to reach me, a sort of vision filled my\nmind--a vision of the peace that soon would come to the world--the song\nof fruitful labour sung again, peaceful lands, soft dusks, lit cabins,\nfilled barns, peaceful flocks and up-reaching baby fingers--all with\nsuch a queer shock to a male consciousness like mine. And when she\nstood before me, I felt that the best part of Varsieff was also there.\nI even fancied his look in her eyes, such as you see exchanged in an\nold pair who have lived long together. I think that a great love always\nseeks to make one of two--in different ways than we dream.\n\n\"You came from him?\" she whispered.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"How does he look?\" she asked.\n\n\"He looks like you,\" I said, for the moment inspired. \"He looks like a\nsun-god, too. He looks _with your love_ into the eyes of soldiers and\nstatesmen and revolutionists, and they find him irresistible.\"\n\n\"Dear Lange,\" she said. \"He loves you, too. You are changed. You have\ncome into the big magic of the revolution----\"\n\n\"I am Varsieff's friend, first and last--his comrade.\"\n\n\"And mine,\" she whispered.\n\n\"The magic comes from standing between, Mlle. Mantone.\"\n\nShe smiled and bent toward me. She had been like a tall, white flower,\nbut now for a second as she bent closer, it seemed to me that I saw a\nhint of Varsieff's gold flame on the other side--because we talked of\nhim.\n\n\"What did he say?\" she continued in a low whisper.\n\n\"He said to tell you that he and all your friends were busy, day and\nnight, weaving and binding the Cause into one great fabric. He told me\nto tell you this--that the work of the Weavers will be given to the\nworld in a day or two--possibly the day after to-morrow. I wish you\ncould have seen Varsieff's face as he spoke to me this last. I remember\nhis words exactly: 'Tell Paula all that I do is for her. That I read\nand write and dream and breathe through her heart--that she has taught\nme well to love and wait--that I love the world through her heart.'\"\n\n\"Anything more?\" she asked in a kind of agony.\n\n\"He told me to say that only you knew his weaknesses, so far----\"\n\n\"I love them best,\" she answered. \"A woman always holds a little\ntighter to the sweet human things of her child.... But he is a teacher,\na leader. He must be clean and flawless.... If it were only for us--I\nshould have him, weaknesses and all.... But he is to lead the clean\npeasants to their promised land----\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nVarsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. He caught me by the\nshoulders when I ceased to speak--as if to shake something more from my\nmind and heart.\n\n\"A man must be half-divine to keep step with that woman,\" he said.\n\nThen he changed the subject by remarking that Christonal was not\nhalf-divine--quite.\n\n\"Christonal is ambitious,\" he added.\n\n\"What has he done now?\" I asked.\n\n\"He has ordered me to take the field----\"\n\nThat turned on a red light in my brain. Varsieff was not a soldier. I\nknew instantly that Christonal was not pure--that he wanted personal\npower more than the good of the Cause. No one knew Varsieff's place\nbetter than he did. My friend could only have been ordered to the\nfield for the same reason that David sent the husband of Bathsheba.\n\nAfter the revolutionary signal went through, Varsieff and I found\nourselves in the Galbraudin Foothills with thirty thousand men, and\nevery man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the peasants thought\nthat if they changed leaders, they would march home at once. They\nwere willing to fight their way home; they had felt their own power.\nVarsieff loved them with a white passion.\n\n\"They won't miss, if _we_ are true! They're clean. God love\nthem--they're clean!\"\n\nHe saw in the peasants the soil for the new earth and the soul of the\nnew heaven.\n\nGermans and Austrians were to the south of our nest in the Galbraudin\nFoothills, while to the east and north were the big lines of Russian\ntroops as yet unawakened to the principles that moved our ranks. Our\nweakness was that the peasants thought the war was over.... The cold\nmountains were in the distance--winter still upon them--a late spring\nin the Foothills.... In this dramatic lull, our men talked of their\nploughing, of their women.\n\nSome one said, \"They're enlisting the women and girls----\"\n\nIt went through the lines like a taint of gas. The men were difficult\nthen even for Varsieff to hold.\n\nYou must get the picture. We revolutionists were cut off from the\nworld. The Germans and Austrians sent us messages--some friendly,\nsome derisive. They thought us fools or gods, but waited to see what\nwe would do. The old line of Russian troops all about--just as clean\npeasantry as our forces--but officered by the straight military class,\nimpervious so far as a body to any shaft of the propagandist.\n\nVarsieff whispered to me that those regular forces were honeycombed\nwith our comrades, but that they were being put to death under the\nslightest suspicion--that two or three hundred were martyred each day.\n\nThe strangeness and horror of it all dawned upon me--the sense of the\nwhole world against us, even America from whom we had drawn the spirit\nof our courage--a kind of holding of our army for slaughter. Listen,\nI have seen tens of thousands of troops go down to the pits of white\nand red, seen their opened veins colour the snows, seen the spots of\nred on the brown earth turn black. I have seen the boys lean over the\ntrenches and the pools from each throat widen and deepen from one man\nto another. I have seen a man grab his mate as he fell and say some\nabsurd whimsical thing that the soldier next didn't understand until\n_his_ moment of death--a little sentence that folded them, not in\nextinction, but in a new life. All the horrors of death--quantity and\nquality--yellow and red and white--pure white passings that made a man\nthink of the lilies--all manner of death I had seen, and still it had\nall been impersonal compared to now.\n\nThis was my own heart business. I shared leadership with Varsieff.\nThese lives were in my hands. I wanted to go down among the boys--one\nby one and say that I was pure, that I loved them--that if they died\nthey were at least loved and not wasted.\n\nI always wondered what those young peasant souls thought about death.\nOnce in a lot of pain when I was just a boy, I wanted badly to die and\nwas deterred from taking my life, because of a counter-desire to get\nhome and see my mother. I think it must be like that with the peasants.\n\nVarsieff saw them in a strange mystic light. No man loved them as he\ndid. They looked like sons of God to him. That's what he saw when they\nwent down to death.\n\n\"There are no dreams too fine for them to answer,\" he whispered. \"They\nare pure--they come from the North like all invaders--glacially pure!\nWe'll warm their hearts--lead them home to God--teach them how to live!\"\n\nHe was silent suddenly. I asked him to go on and then saw the queerest\nlook instead. Varsieff was torn by the thought, that now as a leader\nof revolutionists he must teach his peasants how to _die_ as well....\nA civilian, I repeat, does not realise this quite the same. In the\nCapitol, we had worked for a Cause that meant the death of men, but now\nwe were the officers called upon to charge live troops to the fork and\nthe grill. I knew Varsieff to be more imaginative and tender than I,\nyet I would not have mentioned my qualms, had I known how terribly he\nwas suffering. He caught my hands, whispering:\n\n\"You have it, too?\"\n\nIt was the single hour of weakness that Varsieff had ever revealed to\nme. I studied his face without speaking.\n\n\"I brought them to this,\" he muttered. \"I have always thought of the\nspirit of things. I was always pure enough, following that dream....\nBut, Lange, we're a little mad--we who dream.... I had to come here.\nI had to see this fighting end. Perhaps Christonal knew what he was\ndoing.\"\n\nI put my arm around his shoulder. We Russians are allowed that.\n\n\"I have always thought of the spirit of things,\" he added, \"until I met\nPaula Mantone. I would have forgotten everything for her beauty, but\nshe remembered our souls.... And now, because I would have forgotten\nthe bodies of these men Christonal sent me here to learn that. We are\nspirits and bodies, too, Lange. It takes a crowned head to hold to the\ntwo ends at once--God, hear 'em sing----\"\n\nThe ruffians always hushed and choked us when they sang. Something new\nabout it this time, for Varsieff was seeing them across a red stream of\ntheir own blood.\n\n\"I can't drive 'em into the fire-pits,\" he muttered. \"Why, I'd rather\nwash and dress 'em. They've got the idea that I am to lead them home.\nI can't betray that--not even for the Cause!... I never saw it before.\nThey are not herds, not groups--but monads--each a man----\"\n\n\"We've got to put through the big story,\" I said quietly. \"Thirty\nthousand is cheap--our little planting out here is cheap, if we\ncan give Russia the new heaven and the new earth--Russia--then\nAmerica--then the world----\"\n\nI was giving him back his own words.\n\n\"Thirty thousand lives,\" he repeated. \"Yes, the price is cheap--thirty\nthousand every day for awhile--your life and mine, Lange--a cheap price\nto pay for the glory we see in the days to come. But I can't kill\nthese--I think Christonal knew it all the time----\"\n\n\"You aren't ready for work in the constructive end, if you falter here\namong the wreckers----\" I said.\n\nI knew that no Cause had ever uncovered a more valuable servant than\nthis same Varsieff, though badly out of hand just now. I wasn't making\nany effect upon him. He looked at me strangely.\n\n\"That sounds true--exactly and unerringly true,\" he said wearily.\n\nThere was no quarter possible now.\n\n\"I remember your words in clubs and cabinets and in the ante-rooms of\nthe dumas.... You weren't afraid of blood there, Varsieff.\"\n\nHe winced.\n\n\"They called you the 'Fire-eater,'\" I added, never knowing when to\nstop. \"It's just as straight to-day as it was when you talked there:\n'The old civilisation must be washed clean with the blood of the\nnew----'\"\n\nHis hand came up piteously.\n\n\"But their hearts are turned homeward, Lange,\" he said. \"Their eyes\nare building their homes all over again--eyes turned homeward over the\nmountains----\"\n\n\"Turned to God,\" I said reverently.\n\n\"Yes, but taking my word--the word of Varsieff--that God is there----\"\n\n\"He is there.\"\n\n\"But will He come to them at the last, Lange?... Will He show His\nface--so they will believe?... When they feel their death-wounds--the\nblood sliding out, warm and silent--the cold coming in--will they hold\nto what I said? Will He be there for them?\"\n\n\"You're shot up, old man, only a bit bewildered to-day. No one knows\nbetter than you how great emotional giving of one's self to Cause or\nCountry makes death easy--and quickens the Soul.\"\n\nVarsieff was ashen.\n\n\"I've got to eat all my words! Even you, bring back my words to me.\nI've talked too much.... Suppose I am a madman----?\"\n\n\"Then you have no responsibility for what you said,\" I smiled.\n\nHe stared at the tent-wall.\n\n\"Varsieff,\" I said at last.\n\nHis hand came out.\n\n\"You were pure in all you undertook.\"\n\nSilence.\n\n\"You wanted nothing for yourself.\"\n\n\"I wanted nothing for me--nothing but----\"\n\n\"But what?\"\n\n\"Paula Man----\"\n\n\"She's a part of you--now. You look like her!\"\n\n\"I think I'll have to die to see her--Oh, Lange--I'm sick--I'm\nimpoverished, cell by cell, with loneliness----\" Varsieff laughed\nunsteadily and added:\n\n\"I remember asking you to say to her--that she alone knew my\nweaknesses. Now you know them, too.\"\n\n\"She said she loved them.... Varsieff, I have known you a long time,\"\nI added after a moment. \"I have shaped my manhood, such as it is,\nafter you. I am proud of this--to the end. I, too, care more for\nyou, because of this day--for understanding. To understand--that is\neverything. I who always listened before, tell you to-day: _The dream\ndoes hold. The dream is good. Thirty thousand men--even our singing,\ngrowling, big-footed, red-hearted thirty thousand--is a cheap price to\npay for the new Russia!_\"\n\n\"Do you think Paula would say that?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" I answered, \"from the mother-heart of her.\"\n\nI had spoken, and now I tried to make myself believe that she would\nhave ordered him on. I had to change him, at any cost. A rather\nquestionable way now appeared--to lift him out of himself.\n\n\"Listen, Friend,\" I added. \"You are lonely--but you have the heart of\na woman pulsing with yours--every beat.... You'd have to _be me_ to\nknow what loneliness means. I'd take all the pain to have a woman like\nthat. There are times when you are half a man, because you are apart\nfrom her, but there are other times, Varsieff, when you are twice a\nman--double dynamics----\"\n\nHe caught me in his arms. I knew he was healed, but I felt the cad and\nthe cur for bringing his sympathy on myself.... He was looking back\ntoward the cold mountains when I left him, and the look of the woman\nwas in his eyes. That night I dreamed that Paula Mantone came to me\nwith a message for Varsieff, and that she told me some beautiful thing\nabout the child of a king--but I could not quite get it down to brain.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSedgwick, a brigadier, and technically in command of the thirty\nthousand, was a straight militarist in training. He looked to Varsieff,\nthe political head, for orders. The day came when Varsieff had no one\nto look to, for we were cut off from Christonal and Petrograd. We\nwere not long kept in doubt after that as to who were our immediate\nenemies--not German, not Austrian, but the old line Russian troops hung\nup to the east of us, the same that had recently occupied themselves\nmaking martyrs of the revolutionists in their ranks--two or three\nhundred a day.\n\nIt was a red morning when two of our _fliers_ blew down with the word\nthat our brothers were closing in--that it looked like extermination\nfor our thirty thousand, unless we strode out and crippled them with\nthe first shock. Ten miles to the west the Bundalino Marshes began. We\nhad the secret paths, but it was a wretched fugitive outlook to seek\nshelter there. As I looked at it, it would never occur to leaders who\nhad brought Russia to the moment of parturition, to break up for a\nmiserable safety in the swamps of Bundalino.\n\nI recall the distant firing of that red morning. My eardrums had not\nhealed from recent months more or less in touch with the artillery. I\nremember brushing the edge of the lines, as I crossed from Sedgwick's\nheadquarters back to the hut I shared with Varsieff and a servant or\ntwo. The peasants were listening queerly and quietly to the far firing.\n\nI passed through the sprawl of pup-shelters, and certain ideas occurred\nto me: first, that the arrangement of camp was abominable, a pitiful\nlack of technique shown in this bit of military handling; second, the\nslow cold conviction that we, as revolutionists, must have all the\nvirtues of the old-line troops to begin with, and to build our real\ngreatness on top of that; finally I drew from the queer attitudes of\nthe men toward me, an intuitional flash that to them the distant firing\nmeant a signal that they were about to fight their way home.\n\nVarsieff was sitting dejected upon a camp-chest when I rejoined him.\n\n\"Sedgwick is ready when you are,\" I said. \"He suggests that the men be\nnot kept waiting too long.\"\n\nVarsieff looked up. His face was livid. His soul had no chance that\nmorning. I thought of the old story of Arjuna standing between the\nbattle-lines, reluctant to join action against his own kindred.\n\n\"It's the same here that it was in Petrograd,\" I announced finally.\n\"The dream holds----\"\n\nHe shook his head.... \"They are just boys--white-haired boys. They want\nto go home----\"\n\nThat instant I seemed to see the world laughing at this great man;\nI saw the end of Varsieff politically.... Superb genius broken down\nby an intrinsic weakness--as a man who, trying to lead the world,\nfalls for the lure of an actress maid.... I saw all his work of\nearly years--straight, clean, unerring, selfless labour of a man to\na Cause--the inspired labour of the past two years when he gave the\nwhole fruit of his quickened heart to the new Russia--the magic of\na man loved by a woman great enough to be his divine sculptor and\npriestess.... It was the thought of Paula Mantone that helped me that\ninstant. Sedgwick was on the path outside. I hurried out and whispered:\n\n\"Don't come now. Come back in ten minutes----\"\n\nThe General paused to let me hear the firing. \"But the troops----\" he\nsaid.\n\n\"Give me ten minutes more with Varsieff----\"\n\n\"The attack may be called----\"\n\n\"I know, but I need that time.\"\n\nThe old soldier turned back, hating me....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"Varsieff,\" I said a moment later.\n\n\"Yes----\"\n\n\"I've got to tell you something----\"\n\nHe turned quickly.\n\n\"Paula Mantone is near----\"\n\n\"No!\"\n\n\"I saw her last night.\"\n\n\"Will she see me?\"\n\nI laughed at him. \"Do you think she would want to see you now?...\nYou're a sick man, Varsieff--morally sick. Any decision is better\nthan your present incapacity.... I think she must have sensed your\nweakness--that she came to bring you strength, for she is your\nstrength.\"\n\n\"Does she love me?\" he asked.\n\n\"That's a slap in her face to ask that--a woman who gives you her\nsoul's strength--the love of her life. That's lack of faith, my\nfriend----\"\n\n\"I am whipped. The white-haired boys--they want to go home----\"\n\n\"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 'Go home, boys.' They have\nto fight their way home. First, they have to fight their way to the\neast out of this valley--against old Russia!... It's the first great\nbattle of the Old and New--first time in the history of the world. We\nhold the New for better or worse--this little Theban band. You would\nlet us fail and dribble away and slink into the Marshes--you, her\nlover, whom she calls Boy and Strongheart----\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"What did she say?\" he asked fiercely.\n\n\"----that I need not speak of her coming unless you needed help.\nShe said you would not need help on account of your own lack of\ncourage--rather that it would be your great tenderness that might\ndefeat our Cause now. She said this was but a last ordeal, hardest of\nall for Builders, who have ceased to kill....\"\n\n\"Where did you see her?\"\n\nIt was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed of her coming. I\ninvented a place of meeting and added to his question that Sedgwick did\nnot know of her presence.\n\n\"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her that we dared to be\ncruel to ourselves,\" I added.\n\n\"What did she say to that?\" Varsieff asked hoarsely. He had suddenly\nbecome like a child--one who dared not go to her, who scarcely trusted\nhimself to speak.\n\n\"She said _that_ was the key to the whole matter--that we dare to\nsacrifice ourselves--dare to inflict pain upon each other because one's\ntrue love is the self--\"\n\nI was startled and awed at my own words. The idea was unlike anything\nof mine. It was exactly as if she had told me something of the kind in\nthe dream. Varsieff groaned:\n\n\"The glory of her,\" he whispered. \"Was there more?\"\n\n\"Only that you must not falter now ... and that she would be waiting\nfor you at the end of the day----\"\n\n\"'In the cool of the evening,' she would say,\" he muttered.\n\n\"Perhaps that was it,\" I said.\n\n\"Nothing more?\"\n\n\"Yes--but only if you needed it----\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"That she never loved you so well as now--that you mean new Russia\nto her--that she will come running to you in the cool of the\nevening--either here or _on the other side_--and something about the\nchild of a king.\"\n\nHis back stiffened. He arose. I saw him splendid again. I drew back in\nthe shadow, afraid that he would see the sweat that had broken out upon\nme, though the place was cold.\n\nOf course the idea, as I saw it, was to give the old-line troops the\nfight of their lives--to show the whole of Russia a martyrdom if\nnecessary, thus revealing the temper of the revolutionists. Varsieff\nhad been tempted to let them slip back into the Marshes to save their\nlives.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe were in the saddle side by side an hour later, and close to the\nfront--the two big lines moving slowly and craftily together. Varsieff\nlooked back at his precious boys, following willingly enough so far.\n\n\"It's their white heads that kill me,\" he muttered. \"They are like\nchildren, and that I should----\"\n\n\"They are all our children,\" I answered, sweeping my hand in a circle\nahead where the troops of old Russia had filled in, waiting to deliver\nus to death.\n\n\"Dear old Lange,\" he muttered, \"I'm glad you know her----\"\n\nI wondered what that had to do with his peasant children. Her spirit\nseemed a blend of his every thought and emotion.... We galloped along\nthe fronts, talking to the different commanders. Some were students,\nin their teens, faces of boys who loved Varsieff with a love that\nyearned to die for him immediately, without words, a readiness to leap\nunder his horse's feet.... In a kind of madness, all the mysteries of\nlife seemed to unfold for me that morning, the spirit of Paula Mantone\nalways near because I was so close to her lover.\n\nHe talked to the different leaders quite careless if the peasant ranks\nlistened. He told them that the outer world was watching--that new\nRussia, Poland, Finland, the new Europe, the new World--all depended\nupon _them_ now. He said they were chosen men--that he would never\nleave the field except in victory--that he was brother and father and\nlover to them--that the world would be better for this day. He talked\nlike a man at a bar, or standing among the river-boats, or a father to\nhis sons in the fields.\n\nWe rode along the lines as they marched. Our horses lathered and dried\nand lathered again in the morning sun. I saw my comrade, Varsieff,\ngiving up his soul to the peasants:\n\n\"... I, too, have my farm that waits for me--my woman who waits for\nme--my country, my dream!... I build with you. I stand or fall with\nyou!... We shall be better for this day, my children. This is a day for\nliving men and comrades----\"\n\nHe filled me with a kind of white flame.\n\nThen the crash. After that, was a moment of silence and gloom like a\ncloud passing over the sun. Then our eyes began to reap.... A blizzard\nof hot, stinking metal had broken in front of us--in the midst of our\nmarching and listening battalion. If you have ever felt the mockery\nand cruelty of raging seas, you can know something of the shock\nthat twisted the core of me that instant. That which had been the\nwhite-haired peasants with open laughing mouths and lifted hands, their\nsouls answering the leader who loved them, a song forming on their lips\n... now it was as if a carcass had been moved--one that had lain long\nin the sun, the devastation long continued underneath....\n\nThese were my boys. Next to Varsieff and Paula Mantone, I loved them.\nNow they were down, dismembered, shaking--the air a whir of white to\nmy tortured ears, like a shriek of bewildered ghosts. And here and\nthere, like Varsieff and myself--men standing unhurt in the midst of\nhuman fragments, like maggots, shaking themselves to cover.\n\nI wonder if you can understand? It seemed that I still could see the\nwelter of our boys in the leader's face. Also I saw the death of my\ngood friend--the death-stroke of that superb mind--the face of a man,\nwhose soul had vanished.\n\nBoth our horses were down, though we were unhurt so far.... A distance\nof fifteen feet separated us. I called to him. I tried to tell him that\nhe had not failed. I thought I should die before I moved, before I\ncould get started toward him. The staring failure in his face paralysed\nme. For the time, he was cut off even from the spirit of Paula Mantone.\n\nI had to look down and watch my steps as I made my way to him. I knew\nsome hideous fear that he would fall in that blackness--if I looked\naway.... There were voices from the ground. None of the parts of men\ncould be still. Lips writhed before my eyes--and words were spoken like\nlittle claps of force in thin air.... I caught his opened collar....\n\n\"It's all right, Varsieff,\" I whispered.\n\n\"You lie!\" said he.\n\nIt was like a blow from a man's mother. I had to look into his face\nbefore my brain accepted his words. Then I remembered _my_ lie.... The\nevil of it had not come to me until now, with him breaking down before\nmy eyes.... I saw the look again--that I had seen by the peasant's yard\nlong ago as we crossed the Torqueval Peaks--the look of a frightened\nchild in that face of finished manhood.\n\nI pulled him to me, and led him back toward Sedgwick's staff. I heard\nmyself talking and laughing, jockeying with words.... His head was\ntwisted to the side--his draggled remnant of a mind pulled back to the\nscene of that havoc. And now, if you please, we were catching the real\nthing. The old-line Russians were breaking upon us with machines and\nshrapnel--the old combing and carding that seldom fails.... I saw the\ncold mountains all about.\n\nDid you ever see a slaughter of drones? Perfect economy it is, from\nthe standpoint of the hive. The work of providing for the future is\naccomplished--no mistake in the plan. The workers gather from all\nsides. One by one the big clumsy drones are put to death--wrestling,\ntugging, stinging, many workers giving themselves to death to carry out\nthe spirit of the hive.... The officers ahead who ordered our brother\nRussians upon us, thought they were right--those great grey lines\nahead, honeycombed with our own precious comrades, all of whom were not\nyet martyred, as was proved. But they had not found their voice. It\nlooked like straight death they brought to us.\n\n... Ages. I would turn from Varsieff's face to the cold mountains.\nSomething of the changelessness of the beyond and above came to me out\nof the hideous fluctuation of the near and below. I could not keep\nVarsieff back. He wouldn't resist so long as I held him, but the moment\nmy hands released, his body would rise like some automatic thing and\nblindly stagger forward into the pale smoke-charged sunlight. The men\nwho saw him--many who knew what he had been and had heard him speak but\na few moments ago--lost their concentration on the battle. He became\neverywhere the centre of a rotting line. Clearly they had been fighting\non his spirit--that, and the thought of going home....\n\nSedgwick rode up and saw my struggle--beckoned me back, as one in\nauthority would bully a guard in a madhouse.... I obeyed, thinking of\nthe lie I had told. Here were human fragments; the air filled with the\nshrieks of the fallen--the face of my friend beside me, the face of a\nblasted mind--all because of that lie of mine.\n\nThen, as I trundled him to the rear, sometimes swinging him from one\nelbow to the other, I saw a line, as one would draw a bloody finger\nacross his cheek. Then--it was like a monkey-bite in the bone and hair\nof his eye-brow.... We were in a hail from the machines and the men\nwere falling back.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI think we are half-mad in such moments, or else touched with a divine\nsanity. In the midst of utter loss, the lines breaking back, the men\nbeginning to stampede--the plan flashed into my mind that I could only\nsave the first lie by a second. If the remnant fell back to starve in\nthe Marshes--Varsieff forever was put from me. Such was my thought. The\npersonal issue was greater than the Cause. I was beside myself--never\nso little, never so formidable.\n\nMy arm slipped from Varsieff who sank to his knees and flopped back\nat the wheels of a four-inch _Sanguinary_, bursting hot. I ran back\nto Sedgwick's staff, leaped into an empty saddle--then rode along the\ncracking fronts.\n\n\"Halt----\" I yelled to the faces of the slipping lines.... \"Halt--and\ndon't you see you're running from your own Comrades?... They're taking\nover the Imperialists yonder. Our men have risen in the ranks of the\nenemy!...\"\n\nAll along the lines, I yelled it--and it came forth like an inspired\nmessage--lie that it was from my angle. For to me, death was better\nthan retreat, with the eyes of the world on our little nucleus of the\nnew order.... My shouts were checking them.\n\n\"Our Comrades are coming to us--hold for them!... Don't run away ...\nthey are coming! They are coming to join us, when they clean themselves\nup over yonder--only a little clean-up first, my children. Hear the\nnoise?\"\n\nI don't know how long I rode. I only knew that the fighting death was\nvictory--that there is no propaganda like martyrdom....\n\nThey answered at first with a kind of half-hearted halt. I was struck\nwith the silence. A queer thing happened. I saw that I had spoken the\ntruth.... There was firing ahead, but it had no meaning of death to our\nranks. They were firing in the air, and some threw down their guns and\nwere running toward us. Presently we saw the tent-cloths hoisted in\ntruce. It was like seeing my mother again--shaking the table-cloth to\nthe birds.\n\nThen I saw their lines and ours running together--yes, Varsieff's\nnew heaven and new earth--saw them running together bare-headed,\nwhite-haired peasant boys, hands outstretched, mouths open.... Freedom\nwas an aureola of different sunlight around their heads. On they came\nlike glorious ruffians, seizing their brothers in their arms--the lines\nfolding together like good mates before the Lord.\n\nThen it was like a blast--that Varsieff must see this! A cold blast\nin the heart--that he must not miss this glory--that my eyes must not\ndwell upon this great consummation alone! Deep within, I knew my pain\nwas because his head was not lifted to the picture of his conquest.\nDeep within, I knew that for some inexplicable reason of fate, he was\nheld back like the old Master on the other side of the Jordan--not\nallowed to enter and witness the beauty of the promised land.\n\nIn the midst of that radiant tumult, I ran back to the place that I\nhad left him. It was trampled; the mud was deeper, but Varsieff was\nnot there.... In the midst of the shouting and the glory, I searched\nfor him.... Hours passed, the fighting ceased ... we were a hundred\nthousand strong, armed, provisioned, hearts turned homeward.... Scores\nof us were looking for the Varsieff now.\n\nAnd then I heard my name called, and two young student-officers caught\nme, one to each elbow and carried me forward, running to where the\nwoman stood ... Paula Mantone. She was standing in the midst of her own\npeople--the sun on her face. And I saw, too, the white look of one who\nhas conquered fear, but the weariness of her eyes was like the presence\nof death....\n\n\"Where is he?\" she whispered.\n\n\"Oh, God, I do not know----\"\n\n\"Poor dear Lange--all is well with us.... The boys of two armies\nrushing together--yes, Lange, this is a good day for us----\"\n\nShe spoke rapidly, like lines committed--the same death-like weariness\nin her tones.... She had taken my hand:\n\n\"Come, we must find him ... take me to the place where you left\nhim--come quickly----\"\n\nIt was some distance. We walked at first in silence. It seemed as if\nI could not live if I did not find out what she would have done this\nmorning in my place. Presently she said:\n\n\"I thought he would fail when it came to ordering a charge. He was very\nbrave, they say.\"\n\nI loved the students who told her that, but I had known too much\ntorture to keep the perfect silence.\n\n\"... It was hard for him.... He isn't a killer--he saw only the\nwhite-haired boys----\"\n\n\"My beloved----\" she whispered.\n\n\"I told him that it was the same in Petrograd as here--that the dream\nheld here--that you would have told him to be strong at the death\npart----\"\n\nShe was not listening. She did not answer.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"It was just here. He was wounded a trifle. I left him to stop the\ntroops. They were breaking a bit,\" I explained.\n\nI had passed the place a dozen times. I remembered by the big\n_Sanguinary_--hot when I had let go of Varsieff's arm. The dead had\nbeen covered. The big gun was a wreck now--even the caisson with a\nbroken wheel.\n\nThen I realised it had been moved. There was a queer mound under the\nwreckage. I reached down; my hand felt warmth in the mud. The woman was\nwith me.... I think we moved that mammoth caisson together.... There\nwas no white on him--a coating of mud but warm. We lifted him and the\nwoman's breast covered him from my eyes.... I heard him say her name. I\nheard him speak of the tropical island they would go to together....\n\nI stood apart--I who had stood at his side so long.... There were\nseconds when I heard her low passionate whispers--when I watched the\narch of her shoulder, the beauty of her bended brow.... I did not see\nhis face again. She held it fast to her and talked somehow out of the\nworld. Then I saw her raise her eyes as she had done that night in the\ntent. For the first time I realised that he had only kept alive for her\ncoming.... But still I felt he must know the whole story. I did not go\ncloser, but called in half a whisper:\n\n\"Tell him how the boys came together--arms out and laughing like\nbrothers. Don't let him go without knowing that--tell him how they\nthrew their guns away and then sat down on the ground together--singing\nof home and the rivers and the ploughed lands and the women waiting for\nus----\"\n\n\"I told him--I told him!\" she answered. \"You may come to him ... but\nhe--he only waited to see me.... Ah, Lange, you had him so much----\"\n\nI looked away. Dusk was falling, the white peaks like spirits.... I had\nnot seen his face again, but it suddenly came to me how it had looked\nwhen I saw it before--that which was the bravest and most beautiful\nface that I knew in manhood--how it had been beaten and bruised under\nthe boots of running peasants--crushed into the mire by the feet of\nthe men he loved so well. For a moment, I was in the red world of rage\nthat this should be, but then the mighty drama of it came nearer,\nthe supreme laughing art of it all--that only the saviours call to\nthem. And I smiled, looking away to the dusk falling on the cold\nmountains--and I knew that my friend's spirit was as close to us as the\nbody she held against her breast....\n\nThen back in the bivouacs a song began--the men of two armies roaring\nout a song of the great white democracy of the future....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n27\n\nR\u00c9SUM\u00c9\n\n\nThe end of Varsieff is satisfying to us, and yet I wonder if I can\nmake this sort of romance clear. Martyrdom--they call it a short cut.\nThere is a saying that the soul of a man who dies for something, goes\nmarching on. The Irish become hopeless of their cause, if some one\ndies for the opposition. All revolutionists have reckoned with this\nsubtlety--no propaganda like martyrdom; all the sacred writings refer\nto it, our Bible several times, once in the sentence, \"Greater love\nhath no man----\"\n\nA deluge of phenomena from \"the other side\" has come in during the\npresent war, all the old martyrs of nationalism said to be called to\nthe cause of their empires....\n\nWhat is the romantic haunt that lifts a man to such a pitch of\nexaltation that he transcends pain, and goes singing down to die?\n\nThese are matters much better known among the young dreamers and\nworkers of Russia and the Orient than of America.... Varsieff reveals\nthe child under the man of action; the lover above the intellectualist.\nHis love story unfolds certain passages which we are making a point of\nin these chapters. The woman, Paula Mantone, represents a loved type\nin our sort of story-making. She brings, vaguely, at least, into terms\nthe romantic ideal so calling to us in these days. She means more than\nthree-score and ten. Her love goes on and on. She becomes a priestess,\nin a sense, and conducts her lover through the critical passage of\nfinding his own Soul. External battles then take his body, but she is\nnot altogether bereft. An intuitional woman does not always know what\nshe is doing in her heart story, even when she does greatly. If the\nphysical action had broken different, if the body of Varsieff had not\nbeen required in martyrdom, for instance, he might have emerged from\nthe final stress of action in a state of spiritual exaltation, from\nwhich, I can imagine Paula Mantone calling him back to the gardens of\nthe senses.... Martyr, priestess, revoltee, but always a woman. Every\nyear of devotion to the feminine in fiction, compels a more fluid, yet\nmore mystic handling.\n\nWe have been very close to the young students and poets and players of\nRussia. In the Fall of 1914 we published the following paragraph:\n\nThere[19] are men in Russia who have heard the mighty music of\nhumanity. They will sing their dream and grave their message upon the\npeasant soul.... Not the Russia of Nicholas Romanoff. His passing and\nall the princes of his tainted blood will prove but an incident of the\nGreat War. Very low in the west among the red blinking points of the\nfalling constellation, is Nicholas and that Russia. In the east is the\nRussian _novi_ before the dawn, commanding the dark before the sun.\n\n    [19] _Fatherland._ George H. Doran Company, New York.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe young men of India, the young men of China, the young men of\nRussia, the young men of America--I see them working together in the\nwondrous story of life, as it reels off in the years to come--mating of\nthe East and West, the planet seen in one piece, the communal spirit of\nthe Hive around the globe.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n... I find myself getting up a rather serious intensity over what\n_Romance_ means, a signal to tame down.... _Not to stay_--to drain\nnothing, to leave all cleaner, more orderly and richer for one's\ntarrying, to glance but lightly, yet with a deep smile of understanding\nat the torrent of detached and unmatched things which apparently makes\nthe world--to love it all better than those caught in detachment can\npossibly love one another--to belong to the many by remaining apart\nfrom separate movements--at last to be the Spectator....\n\nOne may deal lightly with crowds, but never with _man_ or _woman_....\nOne may say he has all that civilisation has for any human creature; he\nmay reasonably be bored by all departments of life, but there is enough\nfor an eternity of reverent study and adoration in the nearest human\nface. The lovelier the human face, the more easily we can discern the\ndivine in it.... You get nowhere without loving something. This is the\nhardest kind of material gospel.... We are all incognito--the greater\nwe are, the less perfectly disguised.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFirst and last our dream of Romance means Motherhood--mysterious\nenactments that the mere male can never know, no longer the motherhood\nof the mammal, but the coming of the Guest, the Shining One--the\ngiving of body and mind and soul, no fear, no stipulation, no impeding\nform of thought--more than that, it means a giving of the child to\nthe world.... The Valley Road Girl expresses it in this sharp, short\npicture:\n\n    Once a woman lived in a dense forest, and had a man-child alone\n    there. As it grew, the woman impressed upon it the greatness of God\n    and the wonder of all things. Then one day, she led him by the\n    forest-paths to the Highway, and left him there.\n\nIt means the Madonna who looks up, rather than down, at the head upon\nher breast.\n\nThe creative force is never wasted. Man and woman, in love or lust, are\nnever alone--rather startling, but sooner or later to be accepted. The\npoint of the triangle is either turned downward or upward. The creative\nforce feeds either the abominations of the underworld, or is used in\nits designed order and loveliness as a point of inception for soul into\nform.... The mother-nature of the New Race must be quickened by the\nideal of the coming of a World-teacher, of development a cycle ahead of\nthis race. Women must partake of this dream in their maternities. It\nis the light of such an advent, shining upon the upturned face of the\nmother, that touches the brow of the child with light.\n\nAbsolutely the concept of the new Democracy demands the coming of a\ngreat Unifier--a focal point for all world movements and interests\nand aspirations. The story of a Master's coming is the ultimate\nRomance--the finest story in the world--for that in itself is the story\nof Regeneration.\n\nThe work of this particular volume seems to be ended. Much that is\nprepared need not be used. Right here is the breathing-space that\nalways comes in a life or a book.... _Not to stay_.... Some of our\nboys are off to the trenches; others may go. Part of the original\ngroup has been unable yet to follow the centre to the West. Our good\nGobind[20] who belonged to the pith of things, arose from one breakfast\nand went off to join the cavalry. There's a group in Chicago that we\nsee all too little of--a diffusion time truly, but only to make more\ncertain the time of integration again.\n\n    [20] Ben Poteat.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is one who came, changing all. We thought we knew much about the\nworld. We thought mainly that things were settled for us. It was not\nwords she brought, but a subtler quickening. I cannot tell it exactly.\nThere was a day in which I was bored, not satisfied, and another when I\nwas a child again--breathless, questing, listening for some one to tell\nme stories of another and better country. All that I had done and been\nand lived was diminished; more, all behind was utterly done, leaving\nscarcely any criteria for that which was to be.... No inland lake would\ndo after that; we wanted a continental headland, the sweep of the earth\nand sky--sidereal time, sidereal space. We could only tolerate the\nquest of the Impossible after she came.\n\n... She came and wrote her book through the summer days and then she\nwent away.... Somehow after that we knew what rains and sunlight\nmeant--what all nature was saying and doing. At least, we knew\nbetter.... _Not to stay._ We could not follow continually, but at last\nout of loneliness, the big new laughing wonder of life came to us ...\nand when we told her, she seemed to have known all the time....\n\nWe teach by making pictures. She brought new pigments and freshened\nall the oils. We loved the tints and half-tones before she came, but\nshe restored us to the virgin beauty of the primal rays. We liked the\nblends before she came--the blend of rose and gold, but she brought us\nlength of vision and redemption of taste to know the meaning of the\nUltimate Red, the red of the Pomegranate, the red of the Inspired Mary,\nto whose knees at the last all artists and little children find their\nway--the passionate red of the Quest and the Cross and the Son. She was\nnot surprised when we told her what her gifts mean to us.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAn artist gives himself full-heartedly to the emotions. Keen and\npoignant afterward, is the battle to straighten them out, to comb\nthem down. The mind holds the truth about it all, the spirit sings\nall around, but the heart holds fast to its agonising play of passion\nsettings.\n\nDesire is like an old King, sitting in the midst of his dogs, a King\nby the fire in his tower. The Shining Heir is born, but the old King\nis slow to die. He sits thinking of his old hunts, his rides to kill,\nold wars and faces at the window.... He rode well; he thought he loved\nvery well; a great name, he was, in the hunts, and in all the games of\ngetting. He meditates now upon his one-time conquests, and forgets his\npain. It is his memories that hold him fast to life a little while. But\nat last the head of old King Desire sinks to his breast, the fire fades\nfrom his last memory. The door of the tower room opens, the Shining\nPrince is standing there, and the criers run through the palace crying\naloud, \"The King is dead. Long live the King!\" Desire has ended; the\nBestower takes the throne.\n\nWhen we told her of this new breath of life which she had brought,\nour Mary seemed to know all about that, too. She smiled and looked\naway when we showed her this book (and the inscription to her), so\nmany pages of which she had read before--our dreams for the New Race\nunfolded in letters to her.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe instant one perceives the inner meaning of _Equality_, glimpsing\nthe great Seamless Robe of humanity as one;--he realises that what\nis best for him is best for all others--what is best for the many is\nhis own highest behest.... One must grasp this to know what Democracy\nmeans, to know what is behind the word, a meaning which those who use\nit most haven't dreamed of. You must grasp the spirit of the hive--that\nwinged myriads of golden atoms never stray so far as to break the\nspirit-cord that binds them into one--that the one knows all, contains\npotentially all goodness and beauty and truth, that all action, art and\nthought, come from the spirit of the one--that the fruits of these go\nback. I love to tell it again and again. I saw it all afresh to-day.\n\nThe sun plays tricks with the earth at high noon. One feels superbly\nwell--a kind of seething in the veins. It pulls him away from the great\nquest for the Father's House, in gusts of Mother Nature's magic. All\nthe fragrance of fallow fields is in the hot light and blowing hay and\ndeathless azure and high noon. Glorious swarms of bees were breaking\nout from the Spirit of the hive, all one in Spirit at the top--the\nSpirit brooding at all times over all the workings of the hive....\nIt was the same with the millions of men who walk the earth, one at\nthe top--all one, coming and going in the Spirit, replenished and\nreplenishing always, learning the fusions here in friends and lovers,\neach finding his one, and then the new quest together for the Great\nCompanions.\n\nThen it came to me that we are only sick and blind and lame and\nevil--in the sense of detachment. We must kill that out. Hate spoils\neverything. Hate binds us to the object. We mustn't despise another's\ncoat. It may have been ours yesterday--may be ours to-morrow. We must\nkill out the sense of separateness from any creature, for we are\ndestined to become one spirit with him and all others. Something like a\ncloud--all one, as a cloud is one.\n\nEvery morning on the grass--on millions of blades of grass--a globe of\ndew at the tip of each.... The Lord Sun arises. The dew warms a little\nand slips down the track of the blade into the root. There it breaks\nup into infinite fragments. The sun rising higher weaves his warm\nmagic over the fields; invisibly, like prayers ascending, the drops\nof dew, all diffused into a thousand fragments each, thin as steam,\nand carrying the perfumes of roses and lilacs and honeysuckles and\nmeadow lands and fallow lands and lake and ocean shores,--like prayers\nascending, the dewdrops of yesterday return as one to the cloud. Broken\ninto the farthest diffusion, but not an atom lost. All the richness of\nearth in essence returning to the Spirit....\n\nThe same with bee and dewdrop and man--the same with swarm and cloud\nand tribe--each fragment and division lifting to a greater, unto\nthe Shining Source at last.... The point of it all is that man is\nspiritually woven to his brother and to the race; giving himself and\nhis service to his brother and to the race he glorifies the texture and\nstature of his own soul.\n\nChristmas, 1917.\n\n\n\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nThe book contains many words spelt to reflect the accent of the\nspeaker. The spelling has not been changed.\n\nThere are two instances of unmatched ending quotation marks. The\nmissing opening quotation marks were not added because their\nlocations were uncertain.\n\nThe following changes to printing errors have been made.\n\n    ouselves is now ourselves\n    though is now through\n    unlifted is now uplifted","title":"The Hive","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":70958}